Because of his athletic prodigies that have made an immediate impact in his brief NFL career, which Pierre-Paul is a fulfilled aggressor with tremendous promise in the Giants’ future, he’s an impending All-Pro defensive end and helped the New York Giants secure a playoff spot.
And then, in pursuit of stunning the world to renew familiarity for one of the greatest upsets in Super Bowl history, it finally happened that Pierre-Paul was an indomitable factor to the Giants by playing a predominant role defensively. The Giants returned to the Super Bowl for the first time in four years, the last time they raised the Lombardi Trophy, the last time they met the Patriots in a meaningful game. This is a rematch of Super Bowl XLII — and playing in his first ever NFL title game — is Pierre-Paul himself.
This is a whole new scene for him, and ever since his arrival to Indianapolis, he has truly relished the moment, knowing he has an opportunity, a grand opportunity to win his first ring on the field set for an epic rematch of what should be an inerasable event that will forever firmly ingrain in our minds. He sort of reminds you of a wild stampede or an almighty giant stomping all over his opponents, as if they are tiny and much smaller than him.
What a way to begin your career, instantly as an instrumental piece – and later in the season – in conversations to possibly win Defensive Player of the Year. When you think about it, he does have the speed, the strength, the body, the size and the mental toughness, all the ingredients obligatory to depict an all-rounded defensive end in the NFL, one that have all the qualities of a well-balanced defender – someone who can dismay and fearfully stop the run that terrorize opposing players with bone-jarring, legal hits.
Pierre-Paul, the 6-foot-5, 275-pound, dynamic defensive end, creates a scare and problems for New England. I can’t think of one player who is more of an issue for the Patriots. Then again, I can think of his defensive counterpart and captain Justin Tuck and Osi Umenyiora.
It’s no secret that the Giants are scheming to brutally send Patriots quarterback Tom Brady down to the field for Super Bowl XLVI. The quarterback who is married to a Brazilian supermodel is the favorable target in this game, and the Giants could hinder the flashy Patriots’ offense by committing to the run-stopping, blitz-style, pass-rushing onslaught.
This, I thought, was bold of Pierre-Paul, especially when he announced in front of reporters and cameramen that Tom Brady is not God. This, from a pass rusher that admittedly said Brady was only human during the Giants’ regular-season victory over the Patriots. From the way he described it, the real pressure is on Brady and his bunch, not the Giants themselves.
“Tom Brady is a great quarterback, but at the end of the day he is just a quarterback,” Pierre-Paul said Wednesday. “It’s not like he is God, he can’t be touched. We’ve just got to get to him, and going into this game we know what’s at stake and we’ve got to get there fast enough … We’ve just got to get to him. We know it all starts up front no matter what.”
The Giants are favorites and not underdogs to the Patriots because odd makers finally figured out, as the game of football has been for years, that defense wins games. The point is, if anything, the Giants are deeply armed with weapons defensively, which tells us why they’ve advanced to this point, one win away from immortality. If anything, they are silencing the whisperers, partly when a discounted, disrespected defense is a fundamental service for the Giants’ achievements thus far.
But, nonetheless, the Giants haven’t earned their nod respectively, even after the fearsome foursome had a few signature plays and stops in the playoffs. If there’s one team that can disrupt and irritate Brady, as the Patriots veteran thrower was 28 for 49 for 342 yards, two touchdowns and two interceptions in the November loss, it’s the Giants and that tenacious, voracious defense.
“I think it won’t have much impact on his performance, because … if you look at Week 9 when we played them, it’s like he felt us,” Pierre-Paul said. “We went back on the film, we watched the film and we didn’t really rush as we can as a defense.”
At first glance, in fact, Pierre-Paul seems so much alarmed and largely the influential name on the field – in terms of him speaking undauntedly about Brady. With that in mind, as expected, he’ll try everything to his power to deface and stifle Brady. It’s amazing, really, how fast he’s grown and matured in the league, already a vital element with a striking body of work this season alone.
Each time, he has arose to the occasion, stepping into a huge role and making big plays when it mattered the most, now eligible for a long-term, enormous contract as his money-making days are near. It wouldn’t be the best solution to dismiss the Giants when Tuck said they have to take down Brady, only to articulate with a creative analogy.
“The way to kill a snake is to take off its head,” he said. “The way to kill an offense as potent as that one is, is making sure you take care of Brady.”
And his bunch, too, right?
The fact of the matter is that the Patriots, a team that comprise of a prolific receiving core, where head coach Bill Belichick runs a system for which he plays a pair of tight ends like receivers, has an army of route runners and tight ends. That would be Aaron Hernandez and Rob Gronkowski, who is expected to play Sunday with a sprained ankle. The blueprint to defeating the Patriots is attacking the quarterback, not allowing him enough time to deliver a pass, not allowing him to connect with his propitious receivers, like Wes Welker or Deion Branch.
“I always say the keys to football are the same: stop the run and get to the quarterback,” Giants linebacker Mathias Kiwanuka said. “Maybe they don’t have as strong a run game as other teams do, but they are very effective passing the ball and that ball comes out quick. If we do our job up front and get to him, it will make everybody’s job easier.”
It’s much easier to respectively give him credit for such a late run that the Giants rode for quite some time to reach the Super Bowl and compete for the prize, of course. There’s something else cool about this story, and perhaps incredible. It’s Pierre-Paul quickly turning into a leader on defense, unafraid to take on a team that can intimidate its opponent, undaunted enough to play the role as the dominant force.
He has become almost an unstoppable, durable aggressor – a tough-minded, driven defensive end doing whatever it takes to get inside the quarterback’s head and bring him down to the grass. That’s the dynamic, fundamental, all-around defensive player he has blossomed into, a sizable talent with simply the bull-rush and nifty footwork. He is quick and has developed into one of the relentless All-Pro defensive ends in the game. Just like that, he has altered into an unstoppable, powerful pass rusher, and as Pierre-Paul has improved this year, so did the Giants defense.
This is what New York owns – a formidable player getting meaner and more forceful.
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