Giants win one for Mara
EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. – It was like something out the glory days of New York Giants football. A powerful, unstoppable running game. An unbreakable, near-perfect defense.
It was exactly the type of football that Wellington Mara loved.
“I just wish he could’ve been there to see it,” said Wellington’s son John. “I think he would’ve been pretty pleased.”
Just two days after the Giants said an emotional farewell to their patriarch at St. Patrick’s Cathedral, they returned to Wellington’s cathedral Sunday and paid him a perfect tribute – a 36-0 pounding of the Washington Redskins at Giants Stadium that left Mara’s team alone in first place in the NFC East. They rode a career-high 206 yards from Tiki Barber and a defense that GM Ernie Accorsi said “played possessed.”
“It was very fitting,” Tom Coughlin said. “Mr. Mara loved great defense and loved to run the ball.”
He probably would have loved everything about Sunday, which might have been the most emotional day in the 81-year history of the franchise. It began with a moment of silence and with Mara’s granddaughter Kate singing the national anthem while standing in front of small army of Wellington’s grandkids. It also included a touching tribute to Mara on the stadium scoreboard at the half.
The most poignant moment came after the game was over, and after every single player and coach had walked through the locker room door and stopped to shake John Mara’s hand. Coughlin called John to the middle of the room and a sea of players parted as he moved closer – right until he was face to face with quarterback Eli Manning, who handed him the game ball.
“That was pretty special,” John said. “I told them, ‘Don’t do this to me. I don’t know if I can hold my emotions anymore than I have this week.’ “
By then there was no need because there were few dry eyes left in the building, especially in the locker room where the Giants looked happy but drained after a very emotional week. There had been some concern before the game about how the players would handle it all.
“That was a concern of all of ours, that everybody’s heads were someplace else,” center Shaun O’Hara said. “You were worried that guys were just going to kind of flop around.”
Those fears were quelled just seven seconds into the game when Barber took a handoff from Manning, cut to the left and took off down the sidelines for a 57-yard run. Those were the first of 262 rushing yards the Giants piled on the Redskins, who came into the game with the No. 4 defense in the league. Barber added a 59-yard run as he carried the Giants.
He also added a touchdown late in third quarter, when he dived for the goal line from the 4-yard line for the final score of the afternoon. And as soon as he got back to his feet, Barber ran to the sideline with the ball and pointed at Tim McDonnell, one of the 36 Mara grandkids in attendance.
Then Barber handed him the ball and said, “This one is for the Duke.”
“I wanted to cry, I wanted to smile,” the 22-year-old McDonnell said later. “I wished ‘Pop Pop’ was still here to see it.”
The consensus, though, was that what “Pop Pop” would have liked best Sunday was the outstanding performance of the defense, which pitched its first shutout since one of Mara’s finest moments – the 41-0 destruction of the Minnesota Vikings in the 2000 NFC Championship Game. The defense held the Redskins to just 125 yards, and shut down Mark Brunell (11 for 28, 65 yards, one interception) and Santana Moss (four catches, 34 yards).
They capped it all with a goal-line stand early in the fourth quarter, when they stopped the Redskins on five plays from inside the 9. That included a final play on fourth-and-goal from the 5, when former Redskins linebacker Antonio Pierce knocked the ball away from tight end Robert Royal at the goal line.
“I think we did what Mr. Mara would have wanted,” Barber said.