INDIANAPOLIS — It used to be that Tom Brady was the last man you would want standing between you and the Lombardi Trophy.
It was Eli Manning who shattered Brady’s aura of invincibility one magical, momentous night four years ago, and it is Eli Manning who will deliver an emphatic reminder
tonight against Brady and the Patriots and bring the Lombardi Trophy back home.
It is Eli Manning who has Brady’s number, and it is Eli Manning, more than any Giant, who knows how to finish.
It is Eli Manning, unlike any other New York quarterback, who has not trembled at the sight of the diabolical man in the hoodie on the enemy sidelines, Darth Belichick.
It is Eli Manning who shows up at Super Bowl XLVI with the right arm and brain his big brother, always had and the toughness Phil Simms always displayed.
It is Eli Manning who will be cheered wildly by the pro-Giants crowd inside Lucas Oil Stadium, and by fans all so eager to adopt Peyton’s little brother.
“I think he’s battle-hardened,” Bill Parcells said.
Now do you understand why Gisele wants family and friends to pray for Tommy?
Yes, Eli is in Brady’s class … and Manning doesn’t have to flinch at the menace of Jason Pierre-Paul, Osi Umenyiora and Justin Tuck coming for his head.
“He’s got that smile. He’s got that sort of … angelic look … but he’s a fighter, and he’s a warrior, and that’s what makes Eli so really fascinating,” Giants co-owner Steve Tisch said.
Tisch was asked what he thought when Manning included himself among the elite quarterbacks.
“Look I love when Eli said that — ‘Yeah, Eli, yes! Say it. Tell ’em who you are. Tell your fans who you are. Tell your teammates who you are. Tell your coaches who you are. Tell ownership who you are — you are an elite quarterback. You are in that very, very select small club.’
“If you think about it, the 2011 season was kind of about the quarterback. It was about Eli, and it was about Brady and it was about [Drew] Brees and it was about [Tim] Tebow and it was about Aaron Rodgers, and it was also about Peyton Manning. And those are great stories, and the Peyton Manning story is certainly a very unpredicted, unique story. But Eli is an elite quarterback, and Eli is playing at the top of his game. And he has evolved and matured into not only one of the top three quarterbacks, two quarterbacks, hopefully later tonight, the top quarterback in the NFL. But he’s also a leader in the locker room, and truly deserves to wear that ‘C’ on his uniform.”
It was Eli Manning who set the tone for the week hours after the Giants landed when he tore a page out of Peyton’s book and took the offense to dinner at St. Elmo’s, the restaurant with the sinus-clearing shrimp cocktail.
“He ordered these shrimp cocktails, which were the spiciest shrimp cocktails I’ve ever had,” running back D.J. Ware said. “He let us bite into ’em, we almost start crying. He’s like, ‘Oh I forgot to tell ya, they’re spicy,’ then he showed us how to eat ’em so they wouldn’t be so spicy, you gotta cut ’em up in bits and pieces.”
Who were the guys dying from it?
“Me, Jerrel Jernigan, Brandon Jacobs, Mitchell Petrus — nearly all died,” Ware said. “I think everybody ate it, and it was like, ‘Oh, no.’ Then once they figured out how to eat it, it was OK.”
Manning, a notorious prankster, was in stitches.
“He was dying over there,” Ware said.
“He mentioned Peyton used to do that with some of his rookies,” rookie fullback Henry Hynoski said. “I think he kinda caught us off-guard a little bit.”
Who took the biggest beating from the shrimp cocktail?
“It was somebody sitting to my left, and everyone was hysterical laughing, dude just holding his head, and then the thing was everybody knew hot it was, and when they took bites, they all had the same reaction,” Hynoski said. “I thought he stopped breathing for five seconds. … I think the funniest was Hakeem [Nicks] ’cause he just put his head down and his hand over his eyes for about 30 seconds, like he was just almost like essentially paralyzed, stayed like stuck in that spot, you know?”
It was Manning’s way of keeping the troops loosey-goosey, one more bonding experience before the biggest game of almost all of their lives.
“When you get into a game like the Super Bowl, or Game 7 of the World Series, or NBA Finals, you got athletes who are the best in the league, the best in professional sports,” Tisch said, “and I have such tremendous faith in our quarterback, as do his teammates. … And he’s a wonderful guy off the field, too.”
SuperMann is a Giant.
steve.serby@nypost.com