Just eight players remain from that 2007 Patriots team that fell to the Giants in Super Bowl XLII, but when the teams meet again in Indianapolis two Sundays from now, revenge will be a factor.
"Of course it will," Rodney Harrison, the former Patriots safety and current NBC Sports analyst, told the Boston Herald this week. "You still have key members of that team still there. Logan Mankins, Matt Light, Tom Brady, Vince Wilfork, Wes Welker, so it's a lot of guys that mean a lot -- that core group of guys. So when you take away what the Giants took away, which inevitably could have been the greatest season in the history of the NFL, yes, it matters."
Kevin Faulk, Dan Koppen and Stephen Gostkowski round out the survivors from that 18-1 squad that was one miraculous David Tyree catch away from an undefeated season.
Former Patriots defensive lineman Jarvis Green remembers coming oh-so-close to Giants quarterback Eli Manning on that fateful play.
"When I think about that play sometimes, I think if I could have made that play, I could have been going to Disney World," Green told the Herald. "I had four or five tackles and a sack already, and that would have put me over the top. That would have ended the game. I just know after that play, about three or four weeks after that, I was still really shaken.
"I can remember getting up in cold sweats. I can remember just tossing and turning. And my wife telling me I was talking in my sleep. I said, 'What are you talking about? I don't talk in my sleep.' She said I was saying stuff like, calling out plays, the defensive plays. I told her to put it on a tape recorder. She never did. But it was a tough time after that."
Tyree is long gone, and Patriots coach Bill Belichick has downplayed the notion of exacting revenge on the Giants, but what else would we expect from the Hooded One? He speaks in code, saying everything and nothing all at once. Brady, at least, has admitted he still can't lay eyes on that haunting game film from four seasons ago.
"I wanted them to get the Giants," Harrison told Newsday this week. "I thought that would be a great Super Bowl matchup and an opportunity to put some souls to rest."
