http://msn.foxsports.com/nfl/story/8785472/Don%27t-look-now,-but-Giants-could-be-dynasty
Sitting in his office on the eve of the regular season, Jerry Reese did not want to hear about once-in-a-generation miracles. The general manager of the defending Super Bowl champs refused to dip his team's stunning accomplishment in the waters of Lake Placid.
"I want people to know the Giants are going to be around for a long time," Reese said that day. "We're not going to be just a one-and-done situation."
He wasn't about to use the D-word, but his unspoken ambitions were clear. Reese was planning to erect a dynasty, and nine games later, the Giants are in position to end up with the most improbable dynasty of all.
Including a charmed postseason run punctuated by the victory over the 18-0 Patriots, the Giants have won 12 of their last 13 games and 14 of their last 15 away from home. They are moving with robot-like efficiency through a so-so NFC, and they are doing it with a core cast of 20-somethings just now hitting their prime.
No, the Giants don't even remotely resemble the underdogs who delivered the biggest Super Bowl upset since Joe Willie Namath proved to be a promise keeper against the Colts.
"I hear it all the time," Reese had said of the notion his Giants were touched by stardust. "It was a magical ride, the catch by (David) Tyree, Eli (Manning) getting out of that (rush).
"But holding the most prolific offense in NFL history to 14 points was not a fluke. We won 11 games in a row on the road. This is the National Football League, not junior high."
And in today's National Football League, dynasties are supposed to be nearly impossible to come by. The NFL is a socialist state, its revenues distributed evenly among markets big and small. As always, the hard salary cap breathes life into the possibility that this year's 4-12 can be next year's 11-5.
Yet even after the season-ending injury to Osi Umenyiora, the Giants' one and only Pro Bowler, Reese was talking up the chances of a two-peat. Recent history suggested that his was a credible voice.
During the 2007 training camp, with Tiki Barber retired, with Michael Strahan threatening to retire, and with Tom Coughlin being threatened with a forced retirement, Reese declared his team good enough to win the Super Bowl. The forecast should've been packaged with its own laugh track.
Coughlin was a dead coach walking, Manning had inspired no faith among teammates, columnists and season-ticket holders, and even the most optimistic fans in their LT jerseys were hoping for 8-8.
Somehow, some way, the Giants made a prophet of their general manager, who now has a team capable of doing exactly what New England started doing seven years back. The Patriots shocked the Rams in Super Bowl XXXVI and collected three titles in four years.
The Giants look more like the '96 Yankees than the '69 Mets, and Barber could go down as their Don Mattingly, the great player who just missed out on all the parades.
As the star unfazed by the commotion around him, Manning is the Giants' answer to Derek Jeter, a homegrown winner who slows down the game. If a right-minded observer conducted an open draft of NFL quarterbacks and included a healthy Tom Brady, Manning would be the third pick of that draft, behind Brady and big brother Peyton and ahead of all the Romos and Roethlisbergers and McNabbs.
Manning is 27 and never, ever misses a start. He's got the league's best one-two-three backfield punch behind him, and Ahmad Bradshaw is 22, Brandon Jacobs is 26, and Derrick Ward is 28. The fullback John Madden adores, Madison Hedgecock, is 27.
Manning's got the league's best offensive line in front of him, and four of the five starters are in their 20s. Supplementing that line is 24-year-old tight end Kevin Boss, a rookie Super Bowl hero last seen hurdling a would-be Eagles tackler in comic-book form.
On the other side of the ball, 25-year-old Justin Tuck has grown into a dominant pass rusher, and Mathias Kiwanuka, also 25, isn't far behind him. When Umenyiora returns next season, at age 27, he'll be the equivalent of a high first-round draft pick on a defensive line that doesn't need one, a defensive line that will provide more cover for all the talented kids running around the Giants' secondary.
Where will the Giants need long-term help to sustain the kind of excellence the Yanks sustained in the late '90s? They'll have to replace Amani Toomer at some point, and they'll need to make a smart deal when Plaxico Burress forces the inevitable trade.
This is where Reese comes in. After his predecessor, Ernie Accorsi, made many of the moves that shaped the team's identity, Reese had a great first draft and successfully navigated the low-rent veteran marketplace.
The GM was smart enough to realize his offensive line didn't need Luke Petitgout, not nearly as much as his backfield needed a scrap-heap fullback the likes of Hedgecock. Reese was smart enough to commit a lousy million bucks to Kawika Mitchell. After the Super Bowl, Reese was smart enough to see Manning was so much better off without Jeremy Shockey in his life.
The Shockey trade is looking better by the hour, giving Giants fans reason to believe Reese will improve his team when he eventually deals Burress.
Meanwhile, Coughlin has emerged from the brink of ruin to lord over a model NFL program -- Plax being Plax aside. You think Giants officials haven't looked skyward and whispered words of thanks that they didn't hire Charlie Weis, who is busy remodeling Notre Dame into a Division II powerhouse?
Coughlin has the team to beat in big-boy football, his 8-1 Giants a more serious contender than the 9-0 Titans and a good bet to become the first champion to repeat in franchise history.
Of course none of this guarantees the Giants will claim three titles in four years, or four in six. That great Rams offense only seized one, as did that great Bears defense from the '80s. The '86 Mets were supposed to go on and win three championships, and fell two short. The mighty '86 Giants won it all and then Bill Parcells had to wait four years to earn his second and final ring.
But that was then, this is now. At a time when dynasties are supposed to be dead, the Giants' chances are very much alive.
They are nine games deep into Year 2, and nothing about the roster suggests their legacy will someday be filed under one and done.
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