The NFL's Newest Superstar Is Born

PHOENIX — Eli Manning accepted his Super Bowl Most Valuable Player award at a ceremony here yesterday morning, and 12 hours after leading the Giants to victory on the game's biggest stage, he didn't seem to fully comprehend how much his life had changed.

After four years of an NFL career in which he was derided as a spoiled underachiever living in the shadow of his father and older brother, Manning has now been transformed into a winner, a champion, and a star. But Manning spent more time praising his teammates than having praise lavished on himself.

"If I could give it to the whole team, I would," Manning said of the MVP award. "We never lost our confidence. We never lost our belief that we could make a great run, and at the end of the season we were playing our best football."

Manning repeatedly made the point that football is a team sport, and that the quarterback is simply one individual. But quarterbacks are always judged, rightly or wrongly, by how they perform in the biggest games, and for Manning, Sunday night's 17–14 win over the previously unbeaten New England Patriots was a career-defining moment.

It was also the fifth straight big game in which he played like a star. Manning's stellar run started against the Patriots at the end of the regular season, when the Giants showed that they were, in fact, capable of matching up well against the team everyone thought was not just the best of the 2007 season but maybe the best ever. Manning completed 22 of 32 passes for 251 yards and four touchdowns that night as the Giants narrowly lost, 38–35.

In the postseason Manning got even better, completing 72 of 119 passes for 854 yards, with six touchdowns and one interception in four playoff games. And those numbers don't even come close to telling the whole story. For starters, Manning did it all away from home, against teams that were expected to beat the Giants. In fact, after dispatching a good-but-not-great Tampa Bay Buccaneers team in the first round of the playoffs, the Giants defeated arguably the three best teams in the NFL in three straight games, traveling to Dallas to beat the Cowboys and to Green Bay to beat the Packers before defeating the Patriots in the Super Bowl.

In four straight postseason games, Manning played better against the Buccaneers', Cowboys', Packers' and Patriots' defenses than those teams' Pro Bowl quarterbacks (Jeff Garcia, Tony Romo, Brett Favre, and Tom Brady) played against the Giants' defense. Manning's ability to play well under all game situations wasn't lost on his coach.

"He played in very cold weather in Green Bay and threw the ball with great accuracy," Tom Coughlin said yesterday. "He played in Tampa at 78 degrees. He was able to play his game despite whatever else was going on around him, and that was great for his teammates and the world to see."

Manning played this great postseason with his favorite receiver, Plaxico Burress, hobbling around on ankle and knee injuries. He did it with a rookie fifth-round draft pick from western Oregon named Kevin Boss as his starting tight end after Jeremy Shockey broke his leg in December. He did it despite a Giants running game that had been outstanding in the regular season but turned mediocre in the playoffs — starting running back Brandon Jacobs averaged just 3.2 yards a carry in the postseason and speedy backup Ahmad Bradshaw never broke a run longer than 13 yards in four playoff games.

And yet Manning was so poised under those circumstances that the only interception he threw in this postseason was a pass in the Super Bowl that bounced off the hands of wide receiver Steve Smith. Manning's postseason was in sharp contrast to the regular season, when he threw a league-high 20 interceptions.

After a lifetime of being overshadowed by his father Archie Manning, who spent 14 years as an NFL quarterback, and his older brother and Super Bowl MVP predecessor, Indianapolis Colts quarterback Peyton Manning, Eli is now firmly established as a star in his own right.

"Having two Mannings two consecutive years as MVPs is an extraordinary story," the NFL commissioner, Roger Goodell, said yesterday. "They are just remarkable young men, but Eli really made a name for himself last night."

Archie, a good player who never got close to the Super Bowl during his career, appeared to keep his emotions in check while watching his youngest son on Super Sunday. But Peyton, who frequently appeared on the Fox television broadcast of the game, was jubilant, pumping his fists in a luxury box at University of Phoenix Stadium and then embracing Eli in the postgame locker room before having an Xs-and-Os conversation with him about the Giants' final scoring drive.

Some observers have suggested that Eli lacks the fiery nature of his older brother, but it didn't seem that way during the Giants' postseason drive. For Coughlin's part, he said of Eli yesterday, "He is as competitive as anyone I've ever been around."

Manning's 32-yard pass to David Tyree in the Super Bowl's closing moments is already becoming the stuff of legend, but yesterday Manning was much more interested in talking about Tyree's catch than his own escape from the clutches of the Patriots.

"Last night when I got home I wanted to see it," Manning said. "People are asking me how did I get out of the jam I was in, and I don't know, they just never pulled me down. He just made an unbelievable catch. For him to hold onto the ball, hold it against his helmet and hold on with guys swiping at the ball was just a great individual effort by him."

That's the way the MVP ceremony went yesterday: It was supposed to be Manning's coronation, and instead he insisted on turning all of the attention to his teammates. But it was Manning, more than any other Giant, who shepherded his team to the promised land, and it's Manning whose transformation was completed at the Super Bowl.

Mr. Smith is a writer for the Web site AOLFanHouse.com.