More interesting to stats geeks like me is that at the start of the playoffs, the Giants were, by a significant margin, the worst team in the playoffs. As measured by DVOA, the Giants were a substandard team with negatives in standard DVOA, weighted DVOA, and even non-adjusted (for opponent strength) DVOA. There was a pretty clear drop off after all the other teams before you got to the Giants. They had to beat the Bucs in Tampa Bay, the Cowboys in Dallas, and Green Bay on the Tundra (pretty friggin' impressive, even if Favre gunslung it away in OT). Even with the benefit of being in the crapshoot NFC, it was a pretty unlikely outcome. In fact, in their last four games going back to their Week 17 game against the Pats, the Giants have put up some exceptional performances — completely out of character with the rest of the season. Once again this is detailed over at Football Outsiders.

Of course, the glib and shallow answer to why this improvement was unforeseen is, "You can't measure heart." Well, fine. But if you can't measure it, what good does it do us? And if your argument is that the Giants suddenly found "heart" but the Bucs, Cowboys and Packers didn't, well, I'd be willing to bet that no player on the losing team would say he didn't play with all his heart. So I still don't know what to make of the Giants, but I'm glad they are in because they are a good story. And they will make us all think about what is possible versus what is probable. And I'm happy for Eli, my honorary little brother. And I hope they win.

But they won't. As has been the case since about half way through the season, there is simply no reason to expect the Patriots to lose. None. I know some people are pointing to distractions such as Randy Moss getting accused of assaulting a woman (a claim that is highly suspect), or Tom Brady's phantom foot cast, or Dante Stallworth's Martian alter ego (whoa), but those are nothing but straws for desperate journalists to grasp. Unless you are going to fall back on irrationality, such as "heart," you have to pick the Pats to win the Super Bowl. Sorry, you just do.

I don't hate the Pats, broadly speaking. I just find them a little annoying and rather tedious. I couldn't possibly hate Tom Brady. After all, he is a Michigan Wolverine; I am a Michigan Wolverine. He dresses in the most stylish clothes money can buy; I dress in the most stylish clothes on clearance at T.J. Maxx. He spends his free time impregnating supermodels; I spend my free time thinking about impregnating supermodels. We're practically the same person.

In contrast it's easy to hate the Pats defense. They are stone dirty. Rodney Harrison is a two time winner of the Sports Illustrated Dirtiest Player in the NFL poll, not to mention the four-game HGH suspension from earlier in the year. Instead of game film, Vince Wilfork watches Three Stooges reruns to improve his eye-poking technique. (Although if I were him, I'd worry about Grey Ruegamer's response to such a move.) The latest evidence is Charger's center Nick Hardwick's description of Richard Seymour: "Head slapping, foot stomping in the pile, running by and throwing punches in your back," Hardwick said. "He's a (expletive). ... There were a lot of things he did. There's a field goal where he was stomping feet. Who stomps feet? And the officials weren't doing anything about it. He plays like a punk."