WHAT THEY’RE SAYING

Picture-perfect for the Giants

If there’s any justice, Bill Belichick’s secret cameras got closeups of the celebrating New York Giants sideline Sunday night.

Cut. Print it.

What was supposed to be the greatest season in NFL history ended with one of its greatest failures.

And finishes.

Eli Manning found fortune-telling wide receiver Plaxico Burress wide open for a 13-yard touchdown with 35 seconds to play to give the Giants a monumental 17-14 defeat of the previously undefeated Patriots.

It was Burress who last week predicated the Giants would turn the world upside down by upsetting the Patriots on their seemingly preordained rendezvous with destiny. Burress said the score would be 23-17. He was a little off.

He’ll live with it.

There’s another Manning in town

RESTORED: Giants pride.

One of Tom Coughlin’s promises when he took over the team in 2004 was fulfilled Sunday night in a spectacular, unbelievable, heart-pounding fashion. The Giants are the Super Bowl XLII champions, the slayers of history, thanks to their upset of the previously undefeated Patriots.

Move over Peyton, there’s another Manning in town. Younger brother Eli completed the impossible of impossibles.

Hold on there just a second, Brady

Mr. Perfect wasn’t so perfect, after all.

Tom Brady walked off the field with one second left in a stunning Super Bowl defeat, a rather classless move by a quarterback who, it seemed, could do no wrong.

Sure, the game was over after Brady’s last incomplete pass. And plenty of people had stormed the field, thinking it was done, though the clock still showed 0:01 left.

Brady unbuckled his helmet and walked slowly toward the locker room, never bothering to look back. Once the field was cleared, Eli Manning took a knee and it was over – one of the biggest upsets in sports history.

Giants defense now among franchise’s best

The New York Giants are a franchise defined by defensive toughness. From the long-ago legends such as Sam Huff to the all-time bone-crushers of the Lawrence Taylor-led 1987 Super Bowl champs, Giants’ defenders would rather be known as Big Black and Blue than plain old Big Blue.

Sunday in Phoenix, the 2008 defense did its best to join the pantheon of historically great Giants units, and with the third Super Bowl title in franchise history, they earned it.

A very abrupt end for the Patriots

We in this country love perfection. We love to see a team remove itself from the pack and aim for history. Not since 1972 had an NFL team won every game it played.

We loved to see the New England Patriots try, the drama building with every victory, 18 in a row. And on Sunday, in Super Bowl XLII, we loved to see them fail.

When a team wins all the time – and the Patriots had won three championships during the 2000s and were heavy favorites to win a fourth – we ascribe to it qualities that might or might not be true. They’re arrogant. They think they’ve better than everybody else. They treat championships as an entitlement.

But none of those traits apply. It was the Giants that had done all the talking all week.

The Patriots aren’t arrogant. They’re odious. They cheat.