Below The Beltway

Three simple words.

Best. Super Bowl. Ever.

GLENDALE, Ariz. — The Giants were not even supposed to be here this week, taking an unlikely playoff path through the behemoths of their conference and regarded, once they alighted on Super Bowl XLII, as little more than charming foils for the New England Patriots’s assault on immortality.

But with their defense battering the National Football League’s most valuable player, Tom Brady, and Giants quarterback Eli Manning playing more like Brady than Brady himself, the Giants, seemingly enlivened for the postseason by a 3-point loss to these same Patriots in the regular-season finale, crafted one of the greatest upsets in Super Bowl history, beating the Patriots, 17-14.

It was the first championship for the Giants since the 1991 Super Bowl. Back then, Bill Belichick was the Giants’ defensive coordinator. On Sunday, he was the coach who had led the Patriots to the brink of an historic perfect season, had survived a spying scandal that cost him money and his team a first-round draft pick, had weathered whispers in recent days that a previous title might be tainted, too, only to watch it all collapse under the weight of the Giants’ ferocious pass rush. For another year, the 1972 Miami Dolphins will stand alone with the only perfect season in N.F.L. history.

It was, fittingly, a brutal sack of Brady with 20 seconds remaining that seemed to end the Patriots’ final chance of saving their unblemished record. Brady heaved the ball nearly 80 yards in the air in a desperation shot to reach Randy Moss with 10 seconds left, but on the next play, when the fourth down pass fell to the ground, it was Tom Coughlin, embattled to start the season, who was embraced in congratulation by Belichick.

Belichick then left the field, even though the Giants had to run one more perfunctory play to get the last second off the clock.

Although it wasn’t the closest margin of victory in Super Bowl history, this game will definitely go down in the record books as one of the closest fought ever. Except for a field goal from New York and a Patriot’s touchdown, there wasn’t a single point scored in the game until the fourth quarter, when New England when ahead 14-10. Right after that, the Giants came back and drove the ball down the field for a touchdown that left less than a minute on the clock. At that point, given the way the Giant defense and been dominating the game, it seemed fairly obvious how this would turn out.

Congratulations New York for pulling off a victory that few people, except myself, thought possible.