INDIANAPOLIS — Kevin Boothe saw Mario Manningham’s remarkable, championship-changing catch more than once.
“I was watching it probably about 10 times [yesterday] morning because I didn’t sleep. Just watching ‘SportsCenter’ over and over again,” the Giants left guard said, hours after his team’s 21-17 comeback win over the Patriots in Super Bowl XLVI. “And I still can’t believe he made that catch.”
On the first play of the Giants’ Lombardi Trophy-winning drive, Manningham caught a 38-yard pass in which he beat double coverage, snared Eli Manning’s perfectly pinpoint pass and kept both feet inbounds.
It was a brilliant grab, topping Hakeem Nicks’ Hail Mary against the Packers as the Giants’ biggest catch of the postseason.
“People are comparing it to [David] Tyree’s catch,” Mathias Kiwanuka said of the crucial Super Bowl XLII grab. “If Tyree had the hands, Manningham had the feet.”
COMPLETE GIANTS SUPER BOWL COVERAGE
The catch put the Giants at midfield and led to Ahmad Bradshaw’s game-winning TD.
Nicks said of the catch, “That was the turning point.”
The Giants took over with 3:46 remaining in the game, trailing 17-15 and with the ball on their own 12-yard line. Manning let Manningham know what the call was.
“In the huddle, Eli told him he had a go route,” Nicks said. “And Mario was itching for a go route all game.”
Manning said, “They were playing Cover-2. They really had our Cover-2 beat to the right side with Hakeem and Victor [Cruz] in a two-man route. The Patriots did a good job of jamming both receivers, throwing off the timing of the route. They do have a tendency, their safeties will read my eyes, so I did look to the right pretty long.
“I didn’t like what I was seeing, so I slid up in the pocket. I was going to see where that safety was to the left. I saw he had cheated in, I saw a little window for Mario Manningham where he would catch it or nobody and he made a great catch.”
Boothe was unsure what was going on after the play finished. He only knew that Manningham caught it thanks to what Manning and a Patriots defender were saying.
“I was blocking. I looked up and I didn’t know what happened. But I saw Eli telling us to hurry up. So I was like, OK, maybe he caught it,” Boothe said. “And then when they challenged the play, I asked one of their defensive guys, ‘Did he catch it?’ He kind of shook his head. So I was like, wow. But if he knew that he caught it, then it must have been a heck of a catch.”
And a heck of a pass.
“[Peyton] was mad. He said everybody was talking about how great of a catch it was. He said it was a pretty good throw also,” Eli said of his brother. “It’s a brother looking out for me.”
Manningham, to his credit, dismissed comparisons to Tyree’s helmet catch in Super Bowl XLII, also against the Patriots, correctly explaining that he didn’t catch his in some kind of crazy fashion like Tyree did. As Manningham explained, “It was just a catch.”
“I knew I had to freeze my feet when the ball touched my fingertips,” he said. “Wherever I was at when the ball hit my fingertips, I just froze my feet and fell. I knew I was either going to get hit or hit the ground. I knew something was going to happen, but I knew that I couldn’t let that ball go.”
Kiwanuka said, “It was just unbelievable because he’s been through some ups and downs this season as well. He’s taken some shots and he continued to push. He’s a symbol of this team.”
mark.hale@nypost.com