Eli and Peyton Manning don’t talk much about their feelings, so the shame is that we’ll probably never hear from what they are feeling at this exact moment.
These are football players, not guests on Oprah, so anything beyond being proud of each other will happen only around family and maybe that’s just as well.
Because, really, how could they tell us what this feels like? And if even if they did, how could we understand?
The NFL is America’s greatest entertainment force because it has drama falling out of its pocket, story lines stuck in the sofa cushions, and with the Giants’ 21-17 win over the Patriots in Super Bowl 46 in Indianapolis on Sunday we saw one for the ages.
Eli Manning, 31, won the MVP trophy in the stadium his 35-year-old brother all but built with the Indianapolis Colts, beating his big brother’s nemesis on the biggest stage.
“It was a hell of a football game,” says former New Orleans, Houston and Minnesota quarterback Archie Manning, by now the most famous father in the country. “Yes, it is special.”
This was another in what’s becoming a string of thrilling Super Bowls.
Mario Manningham made one of the great catches in Super Bowl history.
Ahmad Bradshaw tried not to score, and failed. Tom Brady threw a Hail Mary into the end zone on the last play, the ball settling onto the turf and changing the way men on each side will be remembered.
Even in a Super Bowl stocked with plots – is Tom Brady the greatest quarterback of all time? How under-rated is Giants coach Tom Coughlin? What’s up with Gronk’s ankle? – this year’s final game will forever be remembered for the Mannings.
The story of two brothers born to a semi-famous quarterback growing up to be two of the sport’s dominant forces – winners of three of the past six Super Bowl championships and MVP awards – is the kind of thing that pushes the NFL beyond the beer-and-wings crowd.
Peyton was the one anointed for greatness, the one for whom his college coach predicted championships and immortality.
It was Peyton, perhaps more than anyone else, who ushered in Sunday’s throw-and-throw-again NFL.
But now, it’s Eli with the two championships, each as the underdog, each against Brady, each with the help of a spectacular catch by one of his receivers.
Patriots fans will forever remember Brady’s pass hitting Wes Welker’s hands before dropping to the turf with four minutes left and New England up by two.
If Welker caught the ball, the Patriots almost certainly would have won … they’d have had the lead and ball in field-goal range with less than four minutes left.
Instead, we are talking about why Brady winning four championships in today’s NFL is harder than Joe Montana doing it in the 1980s or Terry Bradshaw doing it in the ’70s.
A season that began with many laughing at Eli Manning for answering a question about whether he’s an elite quarterback is ending with him defending the family name in his brother’s stadium with the entire football world talking about him being in the Hall of Fame someday.
