Battle-tested Giants had an edge

2/4/08
giants
By Ryan Chatelain

Battle-tested Giants had an edge

Photo credit: Game Face

Most war heroes have scars. Behind every scar is a story – about a struggle against adversity, about lessons learned, about survival.

The Giants lost more games by Week 2 than the Patriots lost all season. And just maybe, oddly enough, that was the advantage that propelled Big Blue to a 17-14 Super Bowl XLII upset of New England on Sunday night.

Consider Giants middle linebacker Antonio Pierce’s comments back when his team was riding a four-game winning streak that rescued its season after a 0-2 start: “Honestly, I think the reason we’re playing so good is because we’ve still got that 0-2 mentality,” he said. “We went into this game thinking we were the 1-4 team.”

Pierce’s words prove that these Giants learned long ago to embrace their own mortality -- and kept on embracing it until they were world champs.

That’s a luxury not afforded to the previously perfect Patriots. They never reaped the benefits of being defeated.

Yes, there’s good in losing.

And perhaps, as the Patriots and Giants exhibited Sunday night, losing is a necessary evil in building a champion – at least in the NFL.

Do the math. There were 33 NFL and six AFL champions during the pre-Super Bowl era and now 42 Super Bowl champs. Of those 81 teams that achieved their ultimate goal, 80 lost at least once.

Yes, the 1972 Miami Dolphins were a perfect aberration, and having an undefeated squad in a championship game is extremely rare in the first place, happening just four times. But those teams, which seemed so invincible during their regular seasons, are a combined 1-3 in title games.

And it makes perfect (or imperfect?) sense. Losing builds character. It gives players and coaches a greater chance to learn from their missteps. It’s a natural deterrent to overconfidence.

Without losing, you can never fully appreciate winning. And most important, it’s impossible to be driven by a fear of failure if you’ve always succeeded.

As ironic as it may sound, the Giants had all these things going for them.

This year's Patriots, however, had no losses, no scars.

And now no world championship.

AP Photo by Chris O'Meara
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