The Giants kick off the 2008 NFL season tonight as defending Super Bowl champs and No. 1 in the almighty CHFF Power Rankings. The wisdom behind our ranking is irrefutable: the last time an NFL game was fought with real bullets, the Giants were the only team to emerge from their foxhole in one piece.

 

But that's not to say the Giants will be the best team in football this year.

 

In fact, the G-Men enter the 2008 NFL season tonight surrounded by legitimate doubts. Few "pundits" expect New York to repeat as champions. Vegas, for example, says that six or eight teams are more likely to win the Super Bowl, which tells us that fans, those who speak with their gambling dollars, aren't sold on the 2008 Giants, either.

 

Hell, many "pundits," including the Cold, Hard Football Facts, wonder if they'll even reach the playoffs this year in the rough-and-tumble NFC East, let alone march through another Manhattan ticker-tape parade.

 

The doubt exists for many reasons: the 2007 playoff run, for example, literally came out of nowhere. So fans and "pundits" wonder: Were the real Giants the team that blundered through the 2007 season with a 10-6 record, scoring 373 points and surrendering 351? Or were the real Giants the team that shanked the three toughest teams in the pigskin prison, the 13-3 Cowboys, the 14-3 Packers and the 18-0 Patriots, in consecutive postseason games?

 

Fans and "pundits" also wonder: is the real Eli Manning the unflappable rock who guided the Giants to four straight postseason wins and produced the greatest championship-winning drive in the history of the game? Or is the real Eli Manning the dough-faced goober who was mired below mediocrity (note the career 73.4 passer rating) right up until January?

 

The doubt is largely forged, though, by the remarkable nature of New York's Super Bowl upset of New England. There's no way the Giants should have won that game. Yet they did. Which begets the obvious questions, how and why?

 

The fact of the matter is that the Giants in Super Bowl XLII played so far above their heads that, in the immortal words of famous sports pep-talker Tripper Harrison, their noses bled for a week to 10 days and God in Heaven  above came down and pointed his hand at their side of the field.

 

The truth is that the Giants pulled off the Upset of the Century thanks to a series of once-in-a-lifetime performances by players up and down the roster, from the unheralded safety to the back-up tight end to the genetically gifted quarterback. 

 

So it's only natural for fans and "pundits" to doubt that lightning will strike twice. And a look back at Super Bowl XLII proves just how shocking New York's victory over New England was that night, and only serves to reinforce the doubt surrounding the G-Men here at the dawn of the 2008 season.

 

But before dissecting the reasons behind the upset and, by proxy, the reasons for the doubt that surrounds the 2008 Giants, there are two facts you must accept. And you must accept them not because we tell you to accept them. You must accept them because, well, they are true. You must accept them because they are Cold, Hard Football Facts:

 

Cold, Hard Football Fact 1: New York's 2007 postseason was the greatest championship run in history – This is fairly easy to prove and to accept. First, the NFL never even had playoffs before 1967. Before then, from the dawn of the NFL championship game in 1933, the best teams from each conference faced off in an NFL title game. In the rare instances of a tie atop a conference, there was a single playoff game before the title tilt. But generally speaking, teams needed just a single postseason win to be crowned champs. So every champ through 1966 is dismissed from this discussion.

 

From 1967 until the advent of the wild-card round in 1978, there were only two playoff rounds before the Super Bowl. Therefore, it wasn't until 1978 that the possibility existed for a team to win four games in the same postseason. So every champ through 1977 is dismissed from this discussion.

 

Since then, only a handful of teams have done the improbable and won four playoff games: the 1980 Raiders, the 1997 Broncos, the 2000 Ravens, the 2005 Steelers, the 2006 Colts and the 2007 Giants.

 

But the Raiders, Broncos, Ravens and Colts all benefitted from a home playoff game. So those champs are dismissed from the discussion. That leaves us with two, the 2005 Steelers and 2007 Giants, who won three playoff games on the road, and then won the Super Bowl.

 

But among those two, there is no comparison. Both knocked off No. 1 and No. 2 seeds in the playoffs. But the true difference came in the Super Bowl: the Steelers beat a soft NFC team from Seattle that had been virtually untested in the weak NFC West that year. The Giants knocked off the single most dominant team of the Super Bowl Era and stifled the most prolific offense in history.

 

The Giants, in other words, won the Super Bowl only after the greatest playoff run in history.

 

Cold, Hard Football Fact 2: New York's win over the Patriots in Super Bowl XLII was the greatest upset in modern history – This is also fairly easy for us to prove and for you to digest. After all, there had never been a greater disparity between two teams in the history of pro football championship games.

 

Of course, not everyone is willing to cede the floor to the evidence.

 

In popular pigskin culture, for example, everybody cites the 16-7 win by the Jets over the Colts in Super Bowl III as the greatest upset in modern history. But that game does not come close to the level of upset we witnessed back in February. After all, the 1968 Jets were better than the 2007 Giants. And the 1968 Colts were not as good as the 2007 Patriots.

 

Or, in other words, there was a greater disparity between the 16-0 Patriots and 10-6 Giants of 2007 (six games)  than there was between the 13-1 Colts and 11-3 Jets of 1968 (two games).

 

Super Bowl III appears to be a great upset only because it was the first win by the upstart AFL over the established NFL (after losses in the first two Super Bowls) and because conventional wisdom tells us the NFL was the superior league. But, as we learned just one year later, the disparity between the two leagues was not very great, if it even existed at all. Don't forget, the AFL's Chiefs beat up the NFL's Vikings one year later in Super Bowl IV.

 

In fact, the 1968 Colts, who lost to the Jets, and the 1969 Vikings, who lost to the Chiefs, stand as two of the four most dominant teams in the history of the NFL. Yet both were beaten handily by the best of the AFL in the Super Bowl. Clearly, the evidence defies the notion that the NFL in the late 1960s was superior to the AFL.

 

***

 

Once you accept those two Cold, Hard Football Facts, it makes New York's win over the Patriots all the more shocking. After all, lightning struck all over the field that day, not just historically, but as players up and down the Giants roster produced the games of their lives.

 

THE GIANTS OFFENSE – The Giants opened the game with a monstrous 16-play, 9-minute, 59-second drive. It was their longest drive of the season (they came close with a 16-play, 8:56 drive against the Cowboys in Week 10). It was also the longest drive in Super Bowl history. The drive netted only 3 points, but it kept highest scoring offense in history off the field for nearly a full 17 percent of the game. On average, the Patriots scored a TD every 10 minutes last year. The Giants offense, in other words, gave us perhaps the greatest drive of the season in Super Bowl XLII.

 

THE GIANTS DEFESE – The Giants held the highest scoring offense in history to 14 points, its lowest output in more than a year. But more importantly, the Giants defense stifled perhaps the most prolific passing attack in NFL history, holding the Patriots to a season-low 4.3 yards per pass attempt and sacking record-setting QB Tom Brady a season-high five times. Pro football games are not always won in the trenches. As Cold, Hard Football Facts readers know, pro football games are typically won through the air. And the Giants won Super Bowl XLII because their defense held perhaps the greatest passing attack in history to just 4.3 yards every time it stepped back to pass.

 

JAMES BUTLER – The Giants strong safety was one of the quiet heroes of one of the great defensive performances in the history of football. He led the team with 10 solo tackles and 11 total tackles. Both were career highs for the three-year veteran, well ahead of his previous career best of 6 solo and 8 total.

 

KEVIN BOSS – The rookie tight end came to the forefront in the playoffs following an injury to overhyped loudmouth Jeremy Shockey. Early in the fourth quarter, with the Giants trailing 7-3, Boss hauled in a 45-yard pass from Manning to quickly move the ball into New England territory. It was the longest play of the game by either team, the longest reception of Boss's short NFL career and one of the longest plays the New England defense surrendered all season. The career catch set up New York's first touchdown after three quarters of frustration.

 

ELI MANNING – The Super Bowl MVP matched his postseason career high with 2 TD passes and set a career playoff record with 255 passing yards. Oh, in case you missed it: he led the greatest championship-winning drive in the 88 year history of the NFL after a career defined by nothing but mediocrity and unmet expectations.

 

JUSTIN TUCK – The defensive end was held without a sack in three playoff games. No surprise: he had registered  just 11 career sacks in three NFL seasons. Yet against the highest-scoring offense in NFL history, he brought down Tom Brady twice, tying a career high he had matched just once before, back in a September win over the Eagles (the Giants tied an NFL record with 12 sacks that day).

 

DAVID TYREE – The poster boy for New York's Super Bowl victory, and for guys who pulled career-making performances out of their ass in the biggest game of their lives. The veteran wide receiver and special-teams specialist boasted more years in the league (5) than career TD receptions (4) heading into Super Bowl XLII. He had never caught a postseason TD. In fact, he hadn't hauled in a TD, period, since Week 14 of the 2006 season – 14 months earlier.

 

That's a long time to go without a touchdown. In fact, we score more often than that. But here in the biggest game of his career, he caught a fourth-quarter TD that gave the Giants a 10-7 lead. Then, in the most thrilling drive in the history of football, he kinda made something of a big catch, defying the laws of physics by pinning an oblate spheroid against a round plastic helmet – giving the Giants the miracle they needed to pull off the greatest upset ever.

 

These were once-in-a-lifetime performances, a series of lightning bolts that struck all over the field all at once.

 

The doubt that surrounds the Giants today, the incredulity of the public and the "pundits," tell us that few believe these bolts of lightning will strike again in 2008.