The Giants’ championship performance on the biggest Sunday of them all was impressive on both sides of the ball, and on Tuesday we took a look at the halftime defensive adjustments that New York made to counter the Patriots’ matchup advantages underneath. Today we focus on the offense, which was led by a brilliant Manning named Eli and a pair of dynamic pass catchers.

Minutes into the second quarter of Super Bowl XLVI, the Giants offense came out in their...

45. The Jerry Angelo era comes to an end in Chicago:But somehow, Lovie Smith still has a job. Angelo was cut loose after serving as the Bears’ general manager for 11 years. His move to sell the farm for Jay Cutler wasn’t paying off, and he hadn’t drafted a quality starter since taking Henry Melton in the fourth round in 2009. It’s a new era in Chicago with renowned college scout Phil Emery taking over the front office, but Smith...

• Shortly after we wrote the eulogy for Chad Ochocinco‘s career and said that it wouldn’t be shocking to see the Patriots give him the Randy Moss/Terrell Owens treatment, one half of that old guy comparison said that he’s still holding on. Say what you want about Moss, but at least he knew when he wasn’t wanted, and disappeared silently into football darkness. Owens remains in deep denial, and he’s still bitter towards the Cowboys and owner...

Somehow we’ve gone five days without a Peyton Manning post, which feels like at least three weeks in Manning time. Yes, Manning time is a real thing now. We’re functioning solely by Manning’s clock as we walk into the abyss that is the 2012 offseason.

And that clock isn’t exactly moving quickly.

Bob Kravitz is a prominent, well-connected reporter from the Indianapolis Star who’s followed Manning throughout his career in Indy. Kravitz spoke to Tony Kornheiser on his ESPN radio...

50. Baltimore chokes at Gillette: It seemed like every NFL playoff game came down to the wire, but the biggest heartbreaker might have come in Foxborough, where Lee Evans dropped a potential game-winning touchdown moments before Billy Cundiff did his best Ray Finkle impression by hooking the hell out of a game-tying field goal:

49. Sam Hurd gets in extremely hot water: Late in the season, the Bears receiver was arrested and slapped with federal drug charges for allegedly distributing...

Luck undoubtedly plays a large role in sports. And before I look at a few good breaks that put the Giants in position to win the Super Bowl, I should note that, in terms of injuries, Big Blue was actually quite unlucky this year.

This is a team that lost a starting corner (Terrell Thomas) and starting middle linebacker (Jonathan Goff) before the season started. They also saw top draft pick Prince Amukamara go down for significant time, and second-round...

Merely calling Chad Ochocinco’s first season in New England a poor year would be incredibly insulting to players who’ve had poor seasons. That label often sounds far worse than what it really is, and it’s typically reserved for players who still contributed, but their contributions fell far below their usual standards.

Tampa Bay’s Mike Williams had an poor year following his impressive rookie season, but he still had 771 receiving yards, and averaged 48.2 per game.

Two years ago Carolina’s...

Credit Justin Tuck for the role he played in both of the Giants’ Super Bowl titles in the last four years.

In the two victories, Tuck had a total of four sacks, nine tackles, a forced fumble and a forced safety. In Sunday’s game, he made two of the most important defensive plays of the game, pressuring Tom Brady into his first-quarter intentional grounding penalty that resulted in two New York points, and sacking Brady in violent fashion on a...

Don’t worry, he wasn’t hurt. He was just played to look like a damn fool, but really, when you attempt to climb up to a window that’s two floors up after being egged on by people yelling from said window, you know what you’re getting yourself into.

Or at least you should. Most building climbers at team rallies or parades aren’t especially intelligent, and forethought isn’t a particularly prominent skill. This guy quickly became the poster boy for such stupidity,...

We’re a little late on this, but we care very little about that.

When you have an excuse to post a picture of a guy in a Patriots shirt pretending (or maybe not pretending) to be overly inebriated and passed out in the snow in front of a doghouse and amongst his various bottles, you do it.

Since the Internet demands that we acknowledge its ability to turn even the tiniest fragments of pop culture fodder into a never-ending mountain...

Eight years and four days after that Mickey Mouse Club guy introduced the world to Michael Jackson’s sister’s right breast, we have a new controversy stemming from a Super Bowl halftime show. This time, a rapper who goes by the name M.I.A. flipped the cameras the bird.

To be clear, I was not offended by either act. Like the majority of the 100-odd million people who saw both incidents, I have been personally flipped off before, and have — believe...

• We’re all curious to see where Ricky Williams‘ intelligence takes him next, because he was a guy who played football much more than he was ever a football player. He’s simply a fascinating person, and he provided more evidence of that yesterday during an interview with Dave Hyde of the South Florida Sun-Sentinel. Williams was asked why he was retiring, and his response came in the form of a question when he said “why am I playing?...

This morning, the Giants paraded down the Canyon of Heroes to celebrate their fourth Super Bowl victory. But in the process, one fan reminded us that poor Eli Manning still doesn’t get any respect in NYC…

In her defense, she’s celebrating hard and has another human being on her shoulders, so maybe she just lost focus. Or maybe she thought she was at a parade honoring the San Francisco Giants, inexplicably in Manhattan and delayed by about 15 months, for...

Back in October, we relayed to you an interesting find from the guys at Smart Football, who stumbled upon a page from one of Buddy Ryan’s playbooks from Houston.

Essentially, the play — full diagram and explanation here — purposely called for more than 11 men on the field, essentially meaning that the defense was deliberately taking a too-many-men penalty, but taking valuable time off the clock…time that the offense can’t get back regardless of the penalty.

Ryan’s play was...

Ricky Williams has announced his retirement from professional football, but I’d imagine he’s only scratched the surface in terms of what he has the capability of accomplishing over the course of his lifetime.

Williams’ interests and strengths expand far beyond his football life. He treated his NFL career like a job, and he played to live, rather than living to play.

In his retirement press release, issued this afternoon by the Ravens, Williams wouldn’t even call his time as a...

Yesterday was sort of depressing. To diehard football fans, the day after the Super Bowl is kind of like the day after Christmas. You go from the most important day in the football world to a cold, snowy wasteland with seemingly no end in sight.

What the hell are we supposed to do, watch basketball or hockey?

Fortunately, the NFL offseason is stocked with a series of merry football events, starting in two weeks with the NFL Combine, which brings...

Tom Brady made this Tom Brady face because of the Giants defense.

While the quarterbacks get most of the publicity (and MVPs) in the Super Bowl, the defense continues to make big play after big play without getting enough credit. That changes now, as I delve into a halftime adjustment made by Giants defensive coordinator Perry Fewell that helped New York win the Super Bowl.

Fewell’s personnel packages were normal in the first half, consisting of the NASCAR package that...

By now you’ve seen the picture above of Rob Gronkowski knowing that we’re all here for a good time, not a long time, and drowning his sorrows on stage with LMFAO during the Patriots Super Bowl party late Sunday night/very early Monday morning.

Gronk’s offseason detox process involves intoxication, and little clothing. Realizing that it’s only six months until training camp starts, Gronkowski was sure to start his offseason training program in the first hours of his free time. That’s...

Did Cam Stewart cash in on the first quarter safety? And did he parlay that wager with a Gisele on-camera sighting in the first quarter too?

Most importantly, did he roll with the obscure prop bet that predicted an obscene gesture at some point during the halftime performance? Those questions and more will likely be answered in this season’s final edition of the Red Heat podcast below.

Your Super Bowl hangover should be gone now, and the confetti has been...

• What kind of blogger would I be if I passed on a chance to lead a post with a picture of what Maria Menounos looked like after she lost a Super Bowl bet?
• Also in fun pictures: Aaron Rodgers at the Playboy party with Shaq.
• The second that a string of profanity in defense of her husbandcame out of Gisele Bundchen’s mouth during her post-Super Bowl sorrow, it was obvious that the Internet-browsing public would make sure...

This guy was part of the 111.3 million.

Yawn, right? Another year, another Super Bowl that had really, really incredibly amazing ratings. This is barely a blip on your news radar, and you’re tempted to roll back over in bed while that Super Bowl hangover continues to subside.

And I’m here to tell you that this is worth your time, because the Super Bowl setting the record as the most-watched television show in U.S. history for the third consecutive year...

The New York Giants are one of the most unlikely Super Bowl champions in NFL history. Ironically, the last time a team with this little preseason hype went on to win a title, it was Tom Brady and the Patriots back in 2001.

I know, New York was only a three-point dog for this game and many predicted they’d win. And the fact that a team with similar key contributors won the Super Bowl only four years ago means this...

It’s officially Day 1 of the offseason, and with the speed of the NFL calendar we’ll get just a few days this week to finish digesting and dissecting the Super Bowl before we turn our scrutiny towards free agency early next month, and the Scouting Combine that starts in just over two weeks.

We’ve also heard that there’s a decision looming regarding Peyton Manning.

So with that speed in mind, it’s appropriate that less than 24 hours after this year’s...

In recent years, it seems every Super Bowl has had a trademark play that etched itself into our memory bank forever. There was the David Tyree catch and the James Harrison 100-yard interception return and the New Orleans onside kick to start the second half, to name a few.

This year, two plays that took place on the same series will likely battle for the right to be the most memorable moment of Super Bowl XLVI. One was the incredible...