Remarkable catches make Super Bowl XLVI shine
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INDIANAPOLIS -- Two weeks of polishing the NFL legends of Eli Manning and Tom Brady into modern gunslinger monuments might have seemed prudent for an unprecedented collision of Super Bowl MVPs, but the result wasn't terribly artistic until both quarterbacks finally drew their weapons late in a breathtaking Super Bowl.
The final shot, a Patriot missile fired by Brady 51 yards from the New York end zone as the game clock expired, was contested by four leaping players in front of the goal post -- three Giants and tight end Aaron Hernandez.
The ball came out of that desperate mid-air tangle and popped forward for a final indecisive fraction of a second, then fell into history just beyond the reach of New England's other brilliant tight end, Rob Gronkowski.
That two tight ends who'd combined for 423 postseason yards and made New England such a unique offensive force all season each had a shot to effectively catch the Vince Lombardi Trophy seemed the appropriate climactic moment for Super Bowl XLVI, but it will be recorded more for the legacies of Manning and Brady, precisely as scripted.
But as pure football theater, this wasn't Joe Montana vs. Dan Marino. At least not curtain to curtain. This wasn't two heavyweights exchanging haymakers with long, exquisitely arched sideline bombs.
This was going to be somebody's death by 25 or 30 poisoned darts.
Brady, for all his surgical precision, did not complete a pass longer than 21 yards and many of his completions didn't travel more than 30 feet. Wes Welker turned a little flip into a 19-yard gain. Twenty-five of Brady's 27 completions measured no more than that.
Manning wasn't a lot more dynamic, not throwing a 20-yard completion until the winning drive, when he started to look like maybe a second Super Bowl MVP award would be his.
First Published February 6, 2012 12:00 am
