TIPPING PREVIEW - Sunday’s Super Bowl between the New England Patriots and the New York Giants sees a re-match of the 2008 renewal, Super Bowl XLII, in which Tom Brady’s boys were gunning for a perfect win season, but were ultimately brought into line by the rush of the Giants front line that left the QB battered and bruised. And this year’s game could take on a very similar pattern despite there being several key pivotal mini battles all over the pitch. The difference this time around is that the Giants defensive line will also need to protect Manning who looked like a GI Jones coming back home to his family after the war following his torrid time at Candlestick Park against the 49ers.

Both QB’s are vulnerable to attacks down the middle and the big bear that is Vince Wilfork will be dreaming of decking Manning the night before following his awesome performance in the AFC Championship game.
And that’s why the Super Bowl odds this year are so close with the Patriots best priced at 8/11 and the Giants Super Bowl football odds only as big as 13/10, generally 6/5. The other key area is the secondary of the Patriots which is arguably their weakest sector in the whole team. If Manning gets into a rhythm and gets good protection he could conceivably rip them to pieces early on and could set up a Giants’ lead.

The further shift towards the Giants has come about with the will-he won’t-he play conundrum surrounding New England tight end Ron Gronkowski who has been pivotal for the Brady Bunch this year. There is absolutely no way he can be fully effective two weeks after his ankle sprain and that in turn reduces the options for Brady. In contrast Manning has a full complement of receivers to aim that Rolls Royce of an arm at and if he avoids hitting the deck early on then I take the Giants to prove desperately hard to beat. Even better value would be for the boys from the Big Apple to go with a three point advantage as a safety net at odds of 5/6, while I also fancy that touchdowns could well be at a premium so go under 6.5 at odds of 10/11.