GREEN BAY-WISC. – This was right. This was justice, in so many ways, on so many levels. This was a Giants team that walked into the belly of the beast and dominated a football game for 62-½ minutes in the most deplorable conditions possible.
This was a placekicker, Lawrence Tynes, who had missed two field goals in the previous 10 minutes of game time, both of which would have put the Giants in the Super Bowl, getting a third chance. A year ago, Tynes was all but chased out of Kansas City for missing a playoff-game chip-shot field goal against Indianapolis. He would have received a similar fate if he hadn’t made good on his second second chance.
But he did. As soon as his foot met the ball, Tynes started racing the other way. You don’t do that if you’re unsure. As soon as the ball cleared the uprights, kicking the plug out of the wall at old Lambeau Field, a slew of Giants swarmed the field. You don’t do that unless you’re going to the Super Bowl.
And they are doing just that. Going. To the Super Bowl. Imagine that.
Giants 23, Packers 20.
Imagine that.
All day long, whenever the frigid throng of 72,740 could muster the voice-box strength, they’d serenaded the skies with chants of “Go, Pack, go!” Now they did it again, only now there were 2-½ minutes gone in overtime of a tie football game, the Giants had the ball, and the Packers were gasping.
The Giants had been superb for all but a handful of plays all day, yet it was that smattering that had them in this position. Brett Favre had launched a 90-yard missile of a touchdown pass in the second quarter, longest scoring pass in the long history of Green Bay football. Sam Madison had an inexcusable personal foul. R.J. McQuarters, suddenly a big-play specialist, nearly sealed the game with an interception, only to fumble it right back to the Packers.
Handful of plays. A game overloaded with Giants dominance. And none of that mattered. Not now. Not with the temperature at 3-below and the wind-chill at minus-24, as it was in the fourth quarter at Lambeau Field. Not with all these pleading Cheeseheads baying at the black sky and the invisible moon.
Now they were all past the point where anything mattered other than this: Next score wins. Next score and someone gets to go to the Super Bowl, and everyone gets to go inside, away from the oppressive and unrelenting cold. Next score to get the last crack at the Patriots, before they all go waltzing into history and an eternity of best-ever questions.
The Giants had held the Packers, gotten the great Favre to put a three-and-out in the books at the most inopportune time. McQuarters gave the entire Metropolitan area a scare by fumbling again, just as it looked like he was going to take Jon Ryan’s punt back into field goal range all by himself.
And if McQuarters hadn’t finished you off, what happened next surely did. Ahmad Bradshaw, that wonderful late-season find, had broken free from the gaggle of green shirts at the line of scrimmage, he was galloping into the Green Bay secondary, then through it, then all the way to the end zone, and the silence inside Lambeau Field was enough to shatter your eardrums.
Until it was replaced, this time by a relieved roar when everyone noticed the yellow flag on the field, when the men in the black and white stripes started pointing at the Giants, when everyone started to realize what that meant: Holding, Chris Snee. The game was still tied. The struggle was still on. Overtime loomed.
And then: Favre, brilliant all season, the curator of so many of the locals’ dreams, threw a terrible pass. Corey Webster jumped the route, picked it off, and suddenly the Giants were in business. Four downs later, they were in the Super Bowl.
Imagine that.