NFL: Giants Go From Ugly to Super

Final Score: Giants 41, Vikings 0.

It’s almost impossible to read without doing a Little Rascals double take.

To think that only a week ago, the New York Giants sputtered and spat their way to a 20-10 victory over division rival Philadelphia. The offense barely lifted a finger, as their defense and special teams provided them with all the points they needed as they shut down a high powered Eagle offense. In the NFC Championship game, everyone, including the beer vendors, could share the honors in the biggest rout of any NFC Championship game since the 1970 merger.

Kerry Collins, once thought of as a quitter, threw for 343 yards and four touchdowns - in the first half! Two of those scores were to Ike Hilliard, who had the game of his professional life with ten receptions for 155 yards. In fact, the majority of the Giants’ receivers took advantage of Minnesota’s soft coverage. This propelled the G-men to a 34-0 halftime lead.

34-0. At halftime. Half the game was over and the league was steadfastly arranging the hotel suites and first-class plane tickets to Tampa for the Giants. Well, pending a complete meltdown a la 1997.

Collins had only 38 yards in the second half, but seven of those yards were on a touchdown to Amani Toomer that made the score 41-0 at the 12:06 mark of the third quarter. Collins’ services were no longer needed afterwards because the defense made sure that Daunte Culpepper and the rest of the Minnesota offense would hardly move.

The Vikings’ potent offense, one of the best in the league, was held to 114 yards total. They were also shutout for the first time in Dennis Green’s tenure as Vikings’ head coach, as the Giants racked up over 42 minutes in time of possession and tallied 31 first downs.

The flashy four of the Minnesota offense had collectively one of the worst days in NFC championship history. Culpepper gained only 78 yards. He was picked off three times, sacked four times, and lost a fumble. Robert Smith gained only 44 yards on the ground, one more than Giants’ running back Joe Montgomery, who had most of his yards late in the game. The best one-two receiving punch in the NFL was harassed so much by the Giant secondary they would need a restraining order from the Bergen County PD to gain yardage. Cris Carter didn’t catch his first pass until the fourth period. Even so, he had three receptions for a paltry 24 yards. Randy Moss had just two catches all day for eighteen yards.

Eighteen total receiving yards for the league leader in receptions over twenty yards. That statistic alone can tell the story of the Giants’ complete dominance during the entire day.

If there was only one thing that went wrong in the entire day for the Giants that could be pointed out, it was Brad Daluiso’s missed field goal in the third quarter. That hit the goalpost as if it were a Mark Messier wrist shot. Okay, that and Kerry Collins getting picked twice in the first half after their 14-0 lead. Anyone could have figured that the Vikings’ offense would have been able to take advantage of those opportunities. But the Giants defense, especially a defensive line that manhandled the huge Viking offensive line, would deny them. All day, they frustrated the young quarterback Culpepper into making rash decisions – case in point, the three interceptions.

Stepping back in time to November, days after the 31-21 loss to Detroit back on November 19, Giants head coach Jim Fassell made a guarantee at a press conference that his team would make the playoffs. At the time, one would have to think that his prediction was borderline insanity.

Now that the Giants are in the Super Bowl, his prediction can simply be called genius.