This time it's different

By Jordan Heath-Rawlings, Sportsnet Magazine

This time, it's just about football. The "R" words-revenge, redemption, rematch-will spew from the NFL's hype machine like a printing press stuck in overdrive until Super Bowl XLVI kicks off in Indianapolis on Feb. 5. It's a business, after all, and selling a sequel to the league's most compelling championship game of the past decade is just smart marketing. And, if you squint, the seasons of the conference champions are reminiscent of their 2008 classic-a New England Patriots team that topped 500 points scored and entered the playoffs with an offence humming at maximum efficiency against a Giants team that clunked and sputtered their way through much of the regular season before finding their footing, knocking off favoured opponents and landing in the Super Bowl on an overtime field goal in the NFC Championship game. The story sounds the same, but all the details are different.

There's no perfect season on the line this time. No gathering of Miami Dolphins has-beens waiting to pop champagne and celebrate someone else's failure. No pressure of perfection, no endless questions about how it would feel to be immortal. It's Patriots-Giants II, yes, but there are far more differences than similarities between the 2008 and 2012 versions of these teams.

Eli Manning's still the underdog against Tom Brady, but after passing for nearly 5,000 yards of his own this season, it's a far cry from David vs. Goliath. It's still the Giants' pass rush against the Pats' aerial arsenal, but this time the offence relies on short-range rifles instead of long-range cruise missiles. It's still a replacement-riddled, injury-ravaged secondary against arguably the NFL's best stable of receivers-only this time the thoroughbreds dress in Giants colours and catch passes from Manning.

Both teams have weaknesses. Both teams can look artful but win ugly. In the end, it doesn't matter how you got there.

The Patriots featured dominating quarterback and tight-end play all season long, but beat the Baltimore Ravens with defence and a suddenly spry running game.

The Giants, who won with a dominant passing game that moved the ball downfield with regularity, punted on 10 of their final 11 possessions in the NFC title game, and scraped by the San Francisco 49ers thanks to a special teams unit that recovered two turnovers-the final nail in the coffin was a forced fumble in overtime. Manning put his name into the top-five NFL quarterbacks discussion this season, and spent the final two-plus quarters of the NFC Championship game trying furiously to withdraw it.

The Giants are supposed to win and lose on the strength of their defensive line and quarterback, not their special teams and kicker. The Patriots allegedly succeed with Tom Brady's passing genius and fail with their suspect secondary. But teams that survive to the Super Bowl succeed even outside of their comfort zones.

While Brady and the Patriots were opening the season with a 517-yard passing destruction of the Miami Dolphins, the hero of the AFC Championship game was being cut from Oakland's practice squad.

Sterling Moore went undrafted out of Southern Methodist University last April. He signed with the Raiders and never made it off their practice roster, then was signed and cut twice by the Patriots during October and November before sticking for good in December as injuries took their toll on the Pats' already porous secondary. He finally made his mark with two interceptions in a week 17 win over Buffalo that clinched home-field advantage in the AFC playoffs.

After an eye injury forced cornerback Kyle Arrington to the sidelines in the AFC Championship game, Moore was the next man up. And so, a full six games into his NFL career, with a total of seven tackles and two picks, there he was, sharing a secondary with wide receiver-turned-defensive back Julian Edelman and keeping the Ravens out of the end zone on the most critical drive of the season, smacking the game-winning touchdown out of Lee Evans' hands.

For all their flaws, the Patriots' secondary held firm and got them to the Super Bowl in a game where Tom Brady threw no touchdowns and two interceptions, finishing with a season-low 57.5 quarterback rating.

It doesn't matter how you got there.

A day before Brady's season-opening clinic against the Dolphins, the Giants busied themselves coughing up the first of two games they'd lose to the 5-11 Washington Redskins, inspiring Super Bowl dreams in precisely no New Yorkers. After righting the ship with a 6-1 stretch that included a 24-20 win over the Patriots, a four-game losing streak gave voice to the now annual calls for coach Tom Coughlin's head.

A 38-35 loss to the Packers-the league's last undefeated team-brought back memories of 2007, when the Giants lost to the then-undefeated Patriots by the same score, before going on a run that ended with a historic Super Bowl win. This year, the second loss to the woeful Redskins put a stop to those memories, forcing a frantic two-game scramble just to make the playoffs. After decimating the hated Cowboys to clinch the NFC East at 9-7, the Giants knocked off the Falcons and the heavily favoured Packers to meet the 49ers in the conference championship.

A tight game won in the trenches. A shaky Eli Manning. A field goal in overtime to send his team to a Super Bowl against the Patriots-all just déjà vu for kicker Lawrence Tynes, no doubt the first of many.

In the NFL, where an inch either way can change history, big games aren't decided by the dominant storylines that lead up to them, they're decided by the realities of the matchups on the field. The Giants best pass-rusher and leading receiver in these playoffs weren't on the roster in 2008. Neither were either of the Patriots' deadly tight ends. The man who might find himself trying to contain Giants standout Victor Cruz in the waning moments of a one-score Super Bowl wasn't even on an NFL roster when these teams met earlier this season.

If it doesn't matter how you got there, it matters even less what you did four years ago. And once the ball is in the air above the Indianapolis field, the only thing that will matter is who catches it, and how hard he gets hit.

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