Make no mistake about the historic win here, but the Giants were hardly a "talented" team in comparison to previous Super Bowl champions. If you go back through the season and reviewed every game they played, you'd find yourself wondering how the hell they could have even made the playoffs, let alone won the Super Bowl.
Even most of their victories were ugly, and painful to watch -- including close wins over Miami, Buffalo, Washington, etc. Their passing game was pathetic, their linebackers average at best (with the exception of Pierce in the middle), their secondary porous and injury-prone.
This may be the worst team ever to win a Super Bowl. But then I've found myself saying that a lot over the last 10 years or so.
To put it all in perspective...
New York Giants and Cleveland Browns both had the same record of 10-6.
New York won the Super Bowl. Cleveland didn’t even make the playoffs.
They have good WRs, RBs and TEs. Their running game averages over 4.6 yards per carry and had over 2,100 yards this year. Burress played on a bad ankle and still managed 12 TDs and over 1000 yards.
They have good defensive lineman.Strahan a HOF guy had 9 sacks, Tuck had 10 and Umenyiora had 13. This team overall sacked opposing QBs 53 times and had 61 tackles for a loss. They gave up less than 100 yards per game against the run. They might not have a great secondary but no team is strong at DB, LB and DL at the same time.
They have speed at LB and they get after the QB very well not to mention picking up receivers 15-20 yards downfield. Pierce was everywhere last night. Mitchel was a blitz machine.
Manning stood up under pressure and made plays last night and throughout the playoffs. Frankly he was one of the main reasons that they underperformed with his 20 INTs. If he had played at the level he did the past 5 games this team is 13-3/14-2 going into the playoffs.