New York Giants Are Responsible For Patriots’ Best Losses

Every day we inch closer to the start of training camps and the return of real, honest to goodness football. But that just doesn’t seem to make long, hot summer days go any faster. So as we pass the time until the end of July and the start of Training Camp, we tend to resort to lists to pass the time.

SB Nation decided to take a poke at the Super Bowl champion New England Patriots and rank their ten best losses in order of happiness it brought to fans of every other team.

Is there any question that of the Patriot’s losses, their losses to the New York Giants in Super Bowls 42 and 46 would be the most satisfying? After all, they’re the only team that can seem to beat the Patriots in the biggest game, and everyone likes to see the Evil Empire fall short...

2. 21-17 vs. the New York Giants in Super Bowl XLVI

The 2012 sequel failed to live up to the original, but while the Giants’ second Super Bowl win over Belichick wasn’t quite The Godfather Part II, it was at least on par with Crank 2: High Voltage. That, of course, leads us to ...

1. 17-14 vs. the New York Giants in Super Bowl XLII

A generation of children around the world got crate of 19-0 T-shirts, and the Giants’ defensive line proved the best way to beat Brady was to beat the crap out of Brady. New York avenged a Week 17 defeat and derailed what would have been the single greatest season in NFL history. The record-setting Patriots offense, having scored nearly 37 points per game in the regular season, was held to just 14 as Brady was sacked five times.

But Eli Manning earned his status as Brady-slayer with his own brand of heroics.

Aided by a pair of miracles from the football gods themselves (David Tyree’s helmet catch above, Asante Samuel’s dropped interception), Manning led the Giants 83 yards in two minutes to set up a game-winning touchdown pass to Plaxico Burress that gave New York its first Super Bowl in nearly two decades and destroyed New England’s dream of perfection.

And with that, the Patriots-hating universe was at ease.

It’s still only the off-season, but expectations are starting to build for the 2017 Giants, and once again it appears that there will be few teams in the AFC capable of stopping the Patriots.

Will the Giants once again be able to hand a heaping helping of schadenfreude to fans around the rest of the NFL?