NFL

Giants avalanche heading to San Francisco

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GREEN BAY, Wis. — Maybe it’s time we halt the comparisons to January of 2008, as fun as that association is. Maybe it’s time we remember the white knuckles that defined so much of that glorious ride, the comeback in Dallas, the overtime struggle in Green Bay, the palpitation parade that was the Super Bowl against New England.

That team was terrific, and it reached the ultimate plateau, and that is something this team in front of us still has to do. But even those 2007-08 Giants, as touched as they were by pixie dust, as skilled as they were in negotiating late-game minefields, only rarely approached what we have seen from these Giants the past four weeks.

“Everything is clicking,” Osi Umenyiora said, “and when that happens, we are a pretty tough team to match up with.”

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Umenyiora and friends had just sent 72,808 Cheeseheads back into the cold Wisconsin night, had flattened the Packers 37-20 and been dominant doing it. In four straight weeks, four straight win-or-be-gone trials, the Giants have won by 15 points against the Jets, 17 against the Cowboys, 22 against the Falcons and now this, a 17-point creaming that felt like so much more.

This isn’t just a team peaking at the proper moment; it’s a snowball that has quickly and remarkably rolled into an avalanche. It’s a quarterback who is clicking with his receivers and defensive linemen who are meshing with linebackers and defensive backs to rebuild and reload a unit on the fly that Aaron Rodgers himself would call “quick, hard and devastating.”

It is a coach who is at his best in these very games, who took Green Bay’s Mike McCarthy to school not only in building a game plan but executing it, then managing the game in front of him. And sure: If you want to call that Eli Manning-to-Hakeem Nicks rainbow just before the half “fluky” — as Rodgers did — you’re allowed. Some used similar words not so long ago when another Eli parabola attached itself to David Tyree’s helmet.

But you know what else that team was called eventually?

It was called champion. And if it’s still too early to distribute that label for this team, it’s never too early to identify if a team has the elements to make it happen. And after two playoff games and two virtual ones, this much is certain:

This team does.

“We know how to win in the playoffs,” Justin Tuck would say, “and we know how to win on the road. We know what it takes to get where we want to get to.”

Said Tom Coughlin: “Success breeds confidence.”

There haven’t been many teams more brimming with confidence than the ’07 Patriots and the ’11 Packers, a combined 33-1 when they were forced to collide with the Giants. Both teams were classic bullies, able to turn a 14-0 lead into 42-0 because of extraordinary talent and relentless ambition.

And both turned out to have glass jaws when the Giants hit them back.

In Super Bowl XLII, it manifested in an offensive line that all but vanished under the crush of a supersonic Giants pass rush, turning Tom Brady into Steve Grogan. And yesterday, it meant turning McCarthy into Rich Kotite, a panic-stricken mess, calling an inexplicable on-sides kick in the second quarter, going for a fourth-and-five from the Giants’ 39 with 13 minutes left in a one-touchdown game.

The Big, Bad Pats? The Big, Bad Pack?

Not so big after crashing into the Giants. Not so bad.

“We knew what we were up against,” Coughlin would say, and you wonder if the Packers had any idea what they were up against. You wonder if the 49ers do, as they lie in wait in northern California, 21 years after the last time these franchises met for a berth in the Super Bowl.

The world expected a Saints-Packers shootout for the NFC title, football as pinball. They get Giants-Niners instead. Maybe the other two can play in a consolation game somewhere.

“It seems like the light went on a few weeks ago,” a happy, hoarse John Mara said in the locker room, and he’s right. The Giants started playing for their season four weeks ago, and damned if they are going to loosen their grip anytime soon. Too bad Sunday can’t come tomorrow.