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Tyree is a fitting Super Bowl hero for Giants

Wallace Matthews

February 6, 2008

The one you don't see coming is often the sweetest of all. That is why of all the championships won by all the teams through all the years in this sports crazy town, the 1968 Jets, the '69 Mets and the '96 Yankees are the ones we remember most fondly.

To that trinity add the 2007 Giants, who came out of nowhere to smack Bill Belichick and the Patriots upside their smug, complacent heads in Super Bowl XLII, a victory that has captivated the city like no other since that pop fly off the bat of Mark Lemke settled into the glove of Charlie Hayes to end a World Series that feels like a thousand years ago.

That one was special but no more than this one, not only because of who the victim was, but who the victors are. This one is like found money, a winning lottery ticket discovered in the pocket of an old coat. The Giants, written off no less than three times this season - before it started, halfway through the third game of the season, and again scarcely six weeks ago, when they bombed out in a "must-win" Week 15 game against the Washington Redskins, are now officially the best team in professional football.

As such, they were treated yesterday to that uniquely New York ritual, the ticker-tape parade. They heard cheers in Manhattan for the first time in a half-century, having left the Polo Grounds in 1956 for Yankee Stadium and ultimately, the cash-laden New Jersey swamp.

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But this always has been their home, and yesterday they were treated like prodigal sons returning. They are most unlikely champions - a team source told me "the sharks were in the water" in the Giants' locker room during halftime of Week 3, when they trailed the Redskins 17-3 - so it is fitting that their improbable 17-14 win over the Patriots was due in large part to the effort of a most unlikely hero.

No player symbolizes this team more than David Tyree, the full-time special-teams player/part-time receiver who made what is arguably the greatest catch in a Super Bowl.

"I didn't know how great the catch was, I didn't know how high I had to go, I didn't know the ball was on my helmet, I didn't know how deep [Patriots safety] Rodney [Harrison] was down my throat," Tyree said yesterday. "The one thing I knew, steady from start to finish, is I wasn't letting it go."

You can give the MVP to Eli, the boy who became a Manning seemingly overnight, and you can bow to Michael Strahan for his length of service and to Plaxico Burress for showing incredible resilience.

But without Tyree outjumping Harrison, there is no Giants victory. There is no painter putting the finishing touches on the SB XLII championship logo on the walls inside Giants Stadium. There is no Tom Coughlin, looking more like Father Coughlin than the coach Coughlin we've come to know, smiling with reporters as the buses loaded to take him and his team across the river. If there is a parade, it is a Nice Try Parade, because even had they lost, the Giants had played better than a lot of us expected them to.

But because Tyree - the 211th player chosen in the 2003 NFL draft, a kid who played defensive end in high school, then scuffled his way first through Syracuse and now the NFL - came up with the greatest day by a fill-in wide receiver since Max McGee shook off a bender to torch the Chiefs in Super Bowl I, there was the kind of celebratory day New York hasn't seen, incredibly, in nearly a decade.

The Patriots weren't worried about any of the Giants, particularly, but they certainly weren't worried about Tyree, an All-Pro special-teamer but never higher than third on the Giants' depth chart as a wideout.

"This is going to be a great day to share with my teammates," Tyree said early yesterday. "Don't forget, there was two guys involved in that play. If Eli doesn't shake loose, there's no pass for me to catch."

It was a miracle on both ends, a quarterback escaping from what looked like a sure sack, a lightly used receiver trying to outjump a Pro Bowl safety, a third-and-5 against one of the NFL's best defenses and a clock determined to wind its way to zero.

"It wasn't luck, it was destiny," Tyree said. "I believe everything truly happens for a purpose, and this was our purpose, to win this football game."