Before Eli Manning beat Tom Brady and Bill Belichick and the Patriots for the first time, the only playoff games he'd ever won in his career were the three he won on his way to Arizona.
In case you didn't know, Russell Wilson has guided Seattle to a 15-3 record and the Super Bowl, just like his counterpart Peyton Manning.
It is clear by now, in a Super Bowl Week that is about Peyton Manning the way the game will be about him win or lose, that Seattle's quarterback, Russell Wilson, is the Other Guy in the game.
You know another young quarterback who was the Other Guy in a Super Bowl game once? Eli Manning.
Sure. Eli was absolutely the other quarterback in the game when it was the Giants against the Patriots at University of Phoenix Stadium six years ago, when Tom Brady and the Patriots were trying to become the first team since the old Dolphins to go through a season undefeated, and become the first team in pro football history to ever go 19-0.
Eli was a Manning, all right, and his brother Peyton had just won the Super Bowl the year before, against the Bears, been named the MVP of that game in Miami. But nobody was asking Eli if his name was short for 'elite' in those days, or calling him one of the great clutch athletes in New York sports history, or seeing him as a player who had enough poise and enough game to win two Super Bowls, and two Super Bowl MVPs, himself.
Brady was the headliner, trying to win his fourth Super Bowl, Brady was the one coming into the big game the way Peyton does now, having had one of the best statistical seasons any quarterback had ever had. Tom Brady had thrown 50 touchdown passes in the regular season against just eight interceptions. The game was supposed to be about him, his arm, his offense, his receivers, an even loftier place in history.
Then Eli broke away on third-and-5 from his 44-yard line at the end, and flung the ball in David Tyree's direction and Tyree made what will always be known as The Helmet Catch. Then Eli was throwing it to Plaxico Burress in the left corner of the end zone and the Patriots were 18-1, and all of a sudden, Eli Manning wasn't the Other Guy or the other quarterback, he had made the night about him.
Jeff Hostetler, a backup, did it against Jim Kelly and the Bills in Super Bowl 25, when the Bills had a high-scoring offense that the Giants weren't supposed to be able to stop, because no one was supposed to be able to stop them. And Doug Williams beat John Elway in a Super Bowl, on the Super Bowl Sunday when Williams became the first African-American quarterback to win it all. It happens for the other quarterback in Super Bowls, just not very often.
Russell Wilson, a hot kid out of North Carolina State and then Wisconsin, tries to become one of those guys on Sunday night at MetLife Stadium, when he tries to take a Super Bowl away from Peyton Manning. He tries to do what Eli did to Brady the first time, when even a Manning got treated like an understudy to a much bigger star.
On Thursday, at the final media session for the players in the game, Wilson was asked a question about managing his emotions Sunday night, once the ball has finally and mercifully been kicked off.
'I think the biggest way is just to be as normal as possible,' he said, 'enjoy the moment, take it all in. It is real. We're playing in the Super Bowl, Super Bowl 48. At the same time, though, just be poised, be the calm in the storm. Play with a smile on my face and go after it. . . . Enjoy the moment and just capitalize when the big plays come.'
He can make big plays, the whole country has seen him do it since he was a rookie, saw him do it against the 49ers in the NFC Championship Game, a huge fourth-down touchdown throw, Wilson's arm helping change the game as much as Marshawn Lynch's legs did. He can run and throw and think, be creative in his decision-making, show you the kind of imagination after the ball is snapped as Peyton does before it, when he is calling out signals and making you think he might order take-out food before he is through.
Now he finds out if he can do it on a stage like this, have his own Eli game against Eli's brother. Wilson and the Seahawks had the Falcons beaten in last year's playoffs until they didn't. Now they come into Super Bowl 48 having beaten the Saints and beaten the 49ers. It means already Wilson has beaten one quarterback - Drew Brees - who has already won a Super Bowl (against Peyton Manning) and another - Colin Kaepernick - who had a ball in the air last February trying to beat the Ravens.
Before Eli Manning beat Brady and Bill Belichick and the Patriots for the first time, the only playoff games he'd ever won in his career were the three he won on his way to Arizona: Bucs, Cowboys, Packers in overtime at Lambeau Field. He was on a roll himself. It just wasn't the kind of 18-0 roll Brady was on that year.
Wilson? He goes up against his own all-time great, Peyton, at the end of a season when he has put up bigger numbers than at any other time in his career.
Here was Wilson on Thursday:
'There's a difference between being good and being great and changing the game. I think guys like Peyton Manning have changed the game in terms of the way he thinks, in terms of the way he processes things. Tom Brady is the same way. He's so clutch, people fear him when he steps out on the field. Drew Brees is a guy like that. And one day I want to evolve to that.'
The evolution about which he is speaking gets speeded up tremendously if he wins the Super Bowl. He can ask Peyton's kid brother about that, how fast he went from being the Other Guy once to being The Man. One N.
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