The Super Pick

New England is a 12 point favorite, down from 14 at the open. The over/under is 54, down from 55.

Having already made fun of this kind of thing earlier this week at the Carnival, shamed by my sub-.500 prognostication record, and embittered by a matchup that's had me rooting for Bruce Dern in a blimp, injuries and pestilence... well, dammit, there's been 265 picks this year up to now, so let's just get this over the finish line, shall we?

There's basically two ways to go on this pick.

1) Tight game. Here, what you've got going for you is the last two months of Patriot football, where Brady hasn't protected the ball to his previous levels, the linebackers and safeties have given up a lot to tight ends and running backs in the middle, the special teams haven't made the back-breaking plays and Lawrence Maroney has been more important to the offense than Randy Moss. You are also betting on the idea that Eli Manning and the Giants have momentum, a good running game, and a pass rush that will give the Patriots enough long third downs to get off the field, keeping them under 30 points.

There are four problems with this theory.

a) Belichick has had two weeks to plan for Tom Coughlin. What was normally a small advantage just got larger.

b) Eli Manning doesn't do well with odd-man blitzes, and the single best thing this Patriot defense does is get heat that way. Rodney Harrison may be one of the dirtiest players in the NFL, good for at least one boneheaded penalty per game, and if he played for the Giants, Patriot Fan would want him tried for war crimes. He also gets to the QB nearly every time he's sent.

c) Super Bowls tend toward bad game blowouts, though that trend has not shown up very often recently.

d) The Giants' secondary has done an admirable job in covering for its safe spots, mostly due to the pressure of the front line. But they've also played three playoff games against QBs that all played their worst game of the season against them. That's not all coincidence, but rolling craps four times in a row is hard to do, and every observer of those Giants playoff games have talked about how there have been opportunities downfield for the opposition. Translation: Guys Are Wide Open.

2) Blowout. If you're going with a blowout, you're picking the favorites; no one, short of a tremendously myopic Giants Fan, thinks that Blue will win in a walk. With this option, you're thinking the early-season good-weather Patriot offense will show up... in a warm-weather stadium in Arizona. You've also got the strong likelihood of a bounce-back game from Brady, who did throw three picks against the Chargers, and the G-Men being concerned enough about Maroney to risk playing off Moss a little more than the Jaguars and Chargers did. You're also gambling that Manning will turn back into the QB that looked like a legacy pick up until December of 2007.

The troubles with this theory are:

a) Karma. From the Boston Globe letting you pre-order a book celebrating the Perfect Season to the Brady Boot questions, from Spygate to Moss And Battery, you're throwing your money on a big cover win from a team whose public approval ratings have more or less mirrored the Bush Administration. Patriot Act, indeed.

b) Recency. The Patriots have played the last two months with a growing stick up their ass -- there's just been less of the run-it-up gadgetry, LBs in the backfield, reverse and other stuff going on. Teams have been making them dink and dunk, which they've happily done... but that kind of thing doesn't usually create the 40+ point output that causes easy covers.

c) Special teams. The Giants have a reasonable edge here, especially if Feagles and Tynes don't spit the bit like they did in the sub-zero cold of Green Bay. The Pats will need to go farther, and take more time to do it.

d) As 12.5 point favorites that are going for perfection, against a #5 seed that hasn't been here before, the Giants are as loose as a SB team can be. If the game isn't a blowout in the second quarter, it's not going to be a blowout later.

Having said all that... I just think the Pats are going to score in the red zone all day in good weather, and that they are just not going to be denied. I'm also, of course, betting the opposite of what I'm rooting for, if only because the Giants made TO cry.

Patriots 35, Giants 20... which is the Pats plus the OVER. Your MVP, with 3 TDs from short range and over 100 yards on the day, is Lawrence Maroney.