Glendale, Ariz. ? Not only aren’t the New England Patriots the greatest football team ever, they aren’t even the best team this season, apparently.

Undefeated and standing on the doorstep of history before Sunday night’s Super Bowl, the Patriots were tripped up by the New York Giants, a team that barely made the playoffs and came into the postseason as the fifth of six seeds from its conference.

The Giants won the NFL championship, 17-14, on a fourth-quarter touchdown drive in the dying minutes of the game, a drive orchestrated by Eli Manning, who wasn’t supposed to emerge as the celebrated quarterback Sunday night.

That honor was supposed to go to Tom Brady, along with all the other honors the Patriots have amassed this season. Super Bowl XLII was seen as a mere coronation for the team that came into the game 18-0 and nearly a two-touchdown favorite to win the championship for the fourth time in seven years.

And then they played the game.

And it turned out to be Manning’s night.

Eli Manning, most valuable player of the Super Bowl.

“I always thought (Eli) was capable of this,” veteran receiver Amani Toomer said. “I never questioned him at all. The way he sticks with it and is so competitive. Not many quarterbacks can do what he did today.”

Sometimes, the players are made by the game, and not the other way around. That’s how it seemed Sunday night. Manning, who has been criticized heavily for much of his career, was more than just the junior edition from a quarterback family Sunday night. He was the star and earned every point of it.

“We shocked the world, but we didn’t shock ourselves,” New York linebacker Antonio Pierce said.

Perhaps that is true. It doesn’t matter now. What matters is that the Giants believed they had a chance, and despite some early mistakes, they kept believing.

They believed that a quarterback would take his team on a late drive to the win Sunday night. Amazingly enough, they even believed it was their quarterback – and that turned out to be true.

“It’s hard to believe, it really is,” Manning said. “To know you have to score a touchdown to win the game in the Super Bowl. You can’t write a better script than that. An unbelievable feeling.”

Just ask the Patriots.