SAN FRANCISCO — With the game on the line and the Giants trailing the 49ers, 27-20 with 6:35 left in the fourth quarter yesterday, Eli Manning, known for his lore of late-game comebacks, began a methodical offensive drive from his 20-yard line that seemed destined for the tying touchdown.
The 49ers defense would have none of it.
San Francisco, the top-ranked red-zone defense in the NFL coming into the game, stiffened when it mattered most. Manning drove the Giants to the Niners’ 10, but his fourth-down pass was batted away by defensive tackle Justin Smith with 37 seconds left to play to give San Francisco the game.
49ers defenders were brimming with confidence in the locker room after the game. To a man, they never doubted they would be able to keep the Giants and their hot-handed quarterback out of the end zone.
“Nah, [Manning] was marching but we always had confidence in ourselves to stop him,” linebacker Parys Haralson said. “We knew someone was going to step up and make a play.”
That someone was Smith.
The final Giants drive engineered by Manning ended with a thud on a fourth-and-2 play from the Niners’ 10. Manning tried to hit wide receiver Victor Cruz over the middle with a short pass, but the ball was swatted down by Smith at the line of scrimmage — allowing the crowd at sold-out Candlestick Park to cheer and breathe a sigh of relief that the Manning Magic had been thwarted.
“I just put my hand there,” Smith said of his big play. “Luckily it was where the ball went. It was just blind luck.”
It wasn’t luck that the 49ers won the game on the strength of their defense. San Francisco leads the league in run defense, allowing just 73 yards per game by opponents on the ground.
And after holding Brandon Jacobs, the leading rusher yesterday for the Giants, to 55 yards on 18 carries, the 49ers’ run defense has not allowed a 100-yard rusher in the last 31 games — the longest active streak in the NFL.
They also did not allow a rushing touchdown to the Giants. That means the Niners have not allowed a rushing touchdown for a remarkable 10 consecutive games.
The other defensive star of the day for the 49ers was cornerback Carlos Rogers, who intercepted Manning twice to halt Giants drives in the second and fourth quarters.
“Eli is an unbelievable player and those receivers are unbelievable,” Rogers said. “But we got the best of them today.”