NFL teams
Ian O'Connor, ESPN Senior Writer 8y

Bet on Patriots to win it all, with or without injured Julian Edelman

New England Patriots, New York Giants

EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. - Bill Belichick said his history with the New York Giants did nothing to shape the way he felt Sunday evening, and human nature strongly suggested he was lying. So did his face.

Did you see his expression at the end of this wild, wonderful football game? Did you catch that fleeting moment when relief intersected with joy between his eyes before he headed out to meet his old friend and staffmate, Tom Coughlin, finally being the one to congratulate the other guy for giving it the ol' college try?

That was a late January/early February look on Belichick's face in the middle of November, and same goes for the look he wore into his postgame news conference. If beaming would be overstating it, extreme contentment would not. Belichick stepped to the mike right after the quotable, game-winning kicker, Stephen Gostkowski, exited stage right, inspiring the coach to quip, "Tough guy to follow there."

Belichick told a bit of a joke after learning one of his best players, Julian Edelman, has a broken foot that might keep him out for the balance of the regular season. That's how good the New England Patriots coach felt about a 27-26 victory over Coughlin's Giants, the team that broke his heart in Super Bowls XLII and XLVI.

"They gave us all we could handle," Belichick said.

And this time around, the Patriots handled everything about the Giants better than they had in the past. What does it mean? It means that with or without Edelman, the Patriots are still more likely to finish as the first 19-0 champ in NFL history than to lose in the postseason to the Giants or anyone else.

Make no mistake: Edelman's loss is a substantial one. He's a more athletic, dynamic weapon than his predecessor, Wes Welker, and despite all the appropriate attention Malcolm Butler received for winning the Super Bowl on his miraculous goal-line interception, Edelman is the Patriot who scored the deciding points against Seattle. He has 61 receptions and seven touchdowns this year, so he will be dearly missed.

But with Edelman out and getting booked for surgery, the Patriots just beat the Giants at their own fourth-quarter game. The home team held a 10-point lead in the middle of the third quarter when Danny Amendola took a punt return 82 yards, flipping this game on its ear. The Patriots scored a touchdown, yet there was an unmistakable feeling inside MetLife Stadium that the Giants were going to pull something out of their you-know-what for the sake of old times.

You know, Eli Manning's great escape, David Tyree's absurd catch, Mario Manningham's stunning grab on the sideline. Something along those lines.

But these aren't your big brother's Patriots or your big brother's Giants. Coughlin no longer has the defense and consistent pass rush to rattle Tom Brady, and the breaks of the game no longer cut against New England's grain. Just as Butler blew up Russell Wilson-to-Ricardo Lockette at the Super Bowl, he broke up Manning-to-Odell Beckham Jr. in the end zone with 2 minutes, 1 second left, ultimately leading to the concession field goal that gave Belichick and Brady hope.

The Patriots got the breaks against the Giants that New York used to get against them. Beckham failed to make the big catch (not Welker this time), and Landon Collins failed to make the clinching interception (not Asante Samuel this time). Coughlin was guilty of some clock mismanagement on his final possession that allowed Belichick some breathing room, and the Patriots quarterback pounced.

Brady had seen this movie before against the Giants, trying and failing to take his team down the field for the victory. But this time the clock wasn't as much of a blood enemy as it was in those two Super Bowls, and he shook off the dreadful throw that Collins dropped and coolly managed the fourth-and-10 desperation he faced three plays later.

Brady did enough on the drive to make people forget about his earlier interception ("Just a terrible throw," he said), and about the fourth-quarter fumbles lost and recovered. Soon enough, Gostkowski was lining up a 54-yard field goal for the win with 6 seconds left and singing a song in his head (he wouldn't identify the song) to block out everything but the target.

Just like Adam Vinatieri before him, Gostkowski never, ever misses. He said he felt "eerily calm" as the moment approached -- the Giants tried to ice him with a pre-snap timeout -- despite the magnitude of the stakes.

"You're one play away from trending on Twitter as the No. 1 loser in America," Gostkowski said.

New England wasn't losing on this night. Belichick said the ball looked good off his man's foot, and sure enough it was. His Patriots weren't about to join Ronda Rousey's ranks of the once-beaten after all.

"That's the guy you want out there," Belichick said of Gostkowski. "You want your best player in that situation with an opportunity to win the game for you."

Best player on Tom Brady's team? Maybe, maybe not. Either way, Gostkowski made sure the Giants no longer stood as the only NFL opponent New England hadn't beaten since 2008.

"Obviously, those guys have had our number," the kicker said of the Giants. At least Gostkowski was one Patriot willing to say it for public consumption.

Brady said he didn't flash back to the lost Super Bowls during the manic endgame. Belichick? When asked if it was emotional facing the franchise that had won two championships with him as an assistant but that cost him two championships later on, he said, "I'm not thinking about all that. ... It's not about some other game or year." Whatever.

Belichick being Belichick, he made a smart move in the final minutes that certainly couldn't be measured in the box score. He told Amendola to accept the touchback on the Giants' kickoff rather than waste eight or ten seconds for marginal gain, and Amendola did save those precious seconds despite fielding the kick in the shallow margins of the end zone.

Just in case, Belichick also reviewed film the other day of those crazy, multi-lateral comedies that have won a couple of recent college football games, and, voila, the Giants tried and failed to run one on the last play, going backward into oblivion.

Yes, these same Giants used their near-miss loss to New England at the end of the 2007 regular season as a springboard to the takedown of the 18-0 Patriots weeks later. But if this game is a springboard for anyone, New England will be the beneficiary.

The Patriots just exorcised a stubborn haunt without Edelman in the game and without Brady at his best. They just beat Coughlin and Eli without Jamie Collins, and they just beat a diminished Jason Pierre-Paul with an offensive line that's a complete mess.

This isn't about revenge, even with Roger Goodell in MetLife Stadium to watch. This is about liberation. The Patriots don't have to worry about seeing the 5-5 Giants in the Super Bowl, and they don't even have to worry about Edelman's injury wrecking their shot at a two-peat and a one-for-the-thumb.

They are still better than everyone else and a much safer bet to go 19-0 than to crumble along the way. In early February, expect Belichick to be wearing that same expression he wore at the Giants' expense Sunday night.

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