Eli Manning gets candid on thrashing Tom Brady's 16-0 run with Super Bowl 42 win vs Patriots - "He's still a little bitter"
Eli Manning and the New York Giants' Super Bowl win over the 16-0 New England Patriots in 2008 remains among the greatest upsets in North American sports history. There aren't many Super Bowl victories that can compare to the plucky wildcards taking down the only team to finish the regular season undefeated since the league adopted the 16-game format.
Following that Super Bowl loss, and another four years later against the same opponents, Tom Brady won three with the Patriots and one with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Only four teams have won more championships in their history than the quarterback did after his loss in 2008. Despite Brady's unmatched success, the defeat continues to haunt the seven-time Super Bowl champion.
During an appearance on the Roommates Show podcast, Manning revealed that Brady is still upset about that loss and often discusses it with him. (Start at 3:56)
"I never bring anything up to Brady—he's got seven Super Bowls and everything—but he brings up that year, that game. I think he's still a little bitter because they would have gone down as the greatest team of all time. But they can’t say that because they didn’t win the championship, and they lost that game," said Eli Manning."
To his credit, Brady has never shied away from expressing how much that loss hurt him.
Tom Brady's honest take on Eli Manning and the Giants ruining 16-0 season
The five-time Super Bowl MVP was asked about his feelings on that gut-wrenching loss on Apple TV's series 'The Dynasty: New England Patriots.' Brady did not mince words and admitted that he still hasn't gotten over that shocking defeat.
“I was like, what the f**k. That year we dominated, we destroyed teams. How did we lose? If there’s one game in history, I’d change, it’s that game. But you can’t change it. I think what you realize about football and about life is you never have it quite mastered. It was a tough lesson for me to learn,” Brady said on The Dynasty per People.
Brady's resume as a player is unmatched, but he'll seemingly never move past that blemish against Eli Manning and the Giants. The Patriots were on the doorstep of immortality and they achieved it, but not in the manner they'd hoped for.