Steve Serby

Steve Serby

NFL

1990 Giants know the formula to beat Peyton Manning

Peyton Manning cannot throw touchdown passes from the sideline. It has been XXIII years since the Bill Parcells Giants beat the Scott Norwood Bills because Jim Kelly could not throw touchdown passes from the sideline.

Now, the NFL’s No. 1 offense faces the No. 1 defense in the Super Bowl for the first time since. Power doesn’t win football games in this day and age the way it once did. But if there is a team built in the image of the Super Bowl XXV Giants, it is these Beast Mode Seahawks.

Whose best chance to win Super Bowl XLVIII is to hold the ball and hold the ball some more and play keep-away and keep Peyton Manning antsy and agitated, a helpless, desperate spectator for painfully long stretches.

Turn him into Waitin’ Manning.

“We could put Jumbo Elliott and Mark Bavaro over there against Bruce Smith — there’s a just a lot of difference in weight between Bruce Smith and Jumbo Elliott,” Parcells told The Post. “Not that we were trying to pick on Bruce Smith, certainly he was a formidable player. But we thought maybe we had a little physical advantage on the running game over him there that we could use.”

Jeff Hostetler and the Giants possessed the ball for 40:33 that night in Tampa, and a 34-year-old warhorse named Ottis Anderson (21 carries, 102 yards) sledgehammered his way to Super Bowl MVP. Marshawn Lynch can serve as the younger Ottis Anderson for Russell Wilson and the Seahawks.

“That’s obviously the way they have been successful. That really is their deal,” Parcells said. “They try to control the game with good defense and running. Now, their quarterback has the ability to improvise a little bit, which was a little bit like Hostetler, but this kid is probably a little more accomplished than Jeff was mobility-wise. And their quarterback now doesn’t seem to make a lot of mistakes. You have to force the mistake, and he just doesn’t give you the ball. He’s crafty and knowledgeable in that way, and I think well-prepared.

“So, I don’t think when they put the ball in their quarterback’s hands they feel like they’re in a high-risk situation. And their defense is formidable. They’re simple, they don’t do a lot, but they execute well and that’s the key to playing good defense.”

I asked Parcells whether these Seahawks remind him of his ’90 Giants.

“It’s a different day and time … but there is no doubt the way they play is much like that,” Parcells said.

I asked Parcells whether he could sense Kelly and his explosive Bills offense was getting agitated.

“I don’t know that not being on their sideline, I couldn’t tell that,” Parcells said. “But they were in the sideline for a long time, right at the end of the first half for a long drive and then right at the beginning of the second half for an extra-long drive. So I’m sure they were getting a little anxiety because they were watching a lead that they had, 12-3, disappear, and it did disappear.”

The Bills, remember, had annihilated the Raiders 51-3 in the AFC Championship Game.

“We knew that I wasn’t gonna break any plays, so we used plays to kind of control the clock by running plays that would give us two to three yards every time we ran the football and sprinkle in a little Dave Meggett,” Anderson recalled. “The whole plan was to slow the game down and keep Jim Kelly and that high-scoring offense off the field, so that when they got on the field, they were in hurry up mode.”

Ottis Anderson’s touchdown run completed a nine minute and 29 second drive to open the third quarter of Super Bowl XLV.AP

The bread-and-butter runs were 34 Ride, to the right side, away from Smith and Cornelius Bennett, and Ride 35 to the left side.

“Just before halftime, we had the ball for a good little while then, and we saw that they were a little fatigued,” Anderson said.

Before the start of the third quarter, Anderson recalls offensive coordinator Ron Erhardt asking him: “Big guy, how are you feeling?”

Anderson told him he was feeling pretty good.

“Well, you know we’re gonna pound it now. We’re gonna run you up in there all night.”

And Anderson said: “Let’s do it.”

It was a warm night, and the Bills began wilting.

“We knew that we could run on ’em, cause we could run on anybody,” Mark Bavaro said. “We weren’t a real exciting offense, but we were really big and strong and physical, and we had Ottis Anderson, what more could you want? And when we wanted to switch it up, we had Meggett — that’s Thunder and Lightning right there. I really didn’t have much confidence that we were gonna be able to score a lot of points. … We just didn’t score a lot of touchdowns. I knew we wouldn’t be able to match them score for score.”

Just as the Seahawks cannot hope to match Manning’s prolific Broncos score for score. In the Chargers’ 27-20 over the Broncos, San Diego held the ball for 38:49.

Parcells gave Anderson a wink and told him: “I don’t care about you being tired. This is what you wanted, so we’re gonna do this.”

“It helped if we could kinda get our job done a bit too, but not having to be out there against an offense like that certainly helped us,” linebacker Carl Banks said.

Defensive coordinator Bill Belichick used an innovative two-man line and sneaky tactics to slow the game, such as defenders subtly kicking the ball off the line of scrimmage so the zebras would have to re-spot it.

“You gotta go back and look at how easily the Bills scored back then that year,” Bavaro said. “They could score at any time. For our defense to hold ’em to 19 points was unbelievable. … It was the true bend-and-break mentality. I think Thurman Thomas crushed it. He looked like he was running all over the place, but they weren’t getting in the end zone, and that was the key to victory.”

Parcells implored Elliott to keep kicking ass. It was easy for Bavaro to see the sapping of the Bills’ collective will.

“They were on their knees, they had their helmets off, they were sucking it up, breathing heavy,” Bavaro said. “That’s the type of team we were anyway, we usually won our games in the third and fourth quarter, just by wearing down our opponent.

“I think they might’ve taken us a little lightly thinking that they were just gonna outscore us, no problem. … They didn’t seem like they were in great shape in the second half of that game.”

Anderson was asked about Lynch: “If you look at some of the old Walter Payton films, you can see where Marshawn does pretty much the same thing.”

Waitin’ Manning.

“If Pete Carroll has anything in his resume about ball control, and how to win a Super Bowl in cold weather, which I believe he does have the patent on that — but if he doesn’t, he needs to pull out some more XXV film,” Anderson said. “If he takes that blueprint that we ran? I think he has a great opportunity to be successful on Sunday.”

Bavaro favors the Seahawks.

“I’m rooting for Peyton Manning, I’m a big fan and I’d like to see the old guy get one more toward the end of his career,” Bavaro said, “but my head tells me the Seahawks only because I think the physical team is always gonna win, especially in cold weather.”

Bavaro does, however, wonder if the absence of Super Bowl experience might hurt the Seahawks.

“Peyton’s been there before, John Fox has been there before, this isn’t gonna be overwhelming for the Broncos, I think it might be a little awe-inspiring for the Seahawks,” Bavaro said. “I think if the Seahawks get their game going, start pounding it out, control the clock, I think they’ll pull out the victory in the end, but I think it’ll be close.”

Banks likes the Broncos.

“For Seattle to have a good game means that they’re gonna hold him [Manning] to two, maybe three touchdowns,” he said. “The question then becomes whether or not the other quarterback can keep pace, and I don’t think he can.”

Parcells?

“Whoever can get control of the game the way they want to do it is gonna win it,” he said. “So Denver’s gonna try to do it one way, and Seattle’s gonna try to do it a different way. But that was no different than the problem that we were faced with.”

Giant problem solved.