Now you see him

PHOENIX -- I didn’t believe he could do it.

I had predicted the Giants to win in that day’s newspaper, and I still didn’t believe he could do it.

I had loudly repeated that prediction to harried press box mates at halftime, yet I still gave up.

Be honest. So did you.

When Tom Brady hit Randy Moss in the end zone with 2:42 remaining Sunday to give the New England Patriots a 14-10 lead over the New York Giants, we all thought Super Bowl XLII was over.

No way Eli Manning leads them back.

No way he goes 83 yards in 2 1/2 minutes.

No way he goes 83 yards in 2 1/2 games.

Maybe brother Peyton does it. Certainly, Brady could do it.

Probably, half a dozen other quarterbacks in the NFL might do it, from Roethlisberger to Romo to Favre.

No lie, not Eli.

Not the mop-headed, wide-eyed wanderer who earlier could have clinched the win with a gentle pass to a wide-open Plaxico Burress, yet threw the ball to Tucson.

Not the quiet, sometimes cowering kid who had one of the league’s seven worst passer ratings while tying for the most interceptions.

Earlier this year there was even talk of him being benched for a hefty guy named Jared who apparently does not eat at Subway.

This was not Johnny U.

It was Who Me?

Up in the stands pumping his fist, sport coat-wearing Peyton was more demonstrative.

On the other side of the ball, muscular Patriots safety Rodney Harrison was more confident.

“I could not imagine us losing this game,” he said.

Admit it. Neither could anyone else.

Then seven plays into the drive, Manning got me.

He got me at The Yell.

Did you see it? Is that when he got you?

It was the seventh play of the drive. Manning had moved the Giants to their 44-yard line, but barely.

He had underthrown Burress on one play, thrown behind him on another play, and nearly had the ball stripped on a run.

Now, on second down, he lofted a ball deep down the right sideline, but receiver David Tyree turned right when he should have turned left.

The ball sailed directly over the head of Patriots cornerback Asante Samuel, who leaped and stretched and just missed pulling down the interception.

Manning was furious. He screamed. He shook his fist.

The average fan had never seen anything like it. Neither, apparently, had some of the Giants, who stared at him as if he were nuts.

Suddenly, this 27-year-old kid who had spent four years looking like somebody’s pesky little brother looked like something else.

He looked like a quarterback.

“He’s got it deep inside,” said his coach, Tom Coughlin. “He masks it very, very well.”

The mask was finally off. The leader finally showed up.

Even though they were faced with a third-down play, I knew.

Moments later, so did everyone else

“People were asking me how I got out of the jam I was in, and I really don’t know,” Manning said Monday morning. “They were pulling me down, I felt them holding me. But I never felt anyone pull me to the ground.”

He was talking, of course, about one of the biggest gasp plays in Super Bowl history.

I say gasp, because that was the loud sound made by hundreds of professional writers in the press box when Manning, on the ensuing play, somehow tugged his way out of the arms of the Patriots’ Richard Seymour and Jarvis Green.

He became free in the backfield. He leaned back and flung the ball downfield. The ball sailed up between Harrison and Tyree and the rest will live in Super Bowl history.

Call it the Hail Manning.

After Tyree somehow caught it, keeping it out of Harrison’s hands and pinning it against his own helmet while falling on his back, Manning hustled downfield as if there were something he needed to finish.

Four plays later, he did, thwarting a full blitz to find Burress open in the end zone after the receiver had juked Ellis Hobbs to the ground.

The 13-yard touchdown pass put most of the team in a dazed trance, with Burress wandering around holding the ball as if he couldn’t believe it.

Funny, but not Manning. He stuck his arms in the air as if he had been there before. He strutted around as if he belonged.

And why not, considering he had just accounted for all but two yards of the 83-yard drive, converting two third downs and one fourth down in the process, finishing it in a Montana-like 2:04.

Turns out, we didn’t believe, but Manning did. When it came to that last blitz by the Patriots defensive genius Bill Belichick, Manning said he was waiting for it.

“I knew they’d come after us,” he said. “That’s a matchup we’ll take every time.”

The matchup used to be Manning against his older brother, a fight he will never win.

Then it became a matchup between Manning and his spurned draft city, San Diego, another fight he could not win.

Finally, this year, his struggles culminated in a matchup between Manning and himself.

Would the pressures finally make him crumble? At the very least, wouldn’t they make him change? How could they not?

“I’m very comfortable in my own skin,” Manning said Monday. “I am the way I am, and I wasn’t going to change.”

Go figure. The guy nobody believed in just won a Super Bowl by being himself.

“This was a guy who had taken all this criticism,” said linebacker Antonio Pierce. “Well, you can’t criticize the MVP.”

There’s a lesson there recognized by every Giant, a lesson that will carry into next season, when Eli Manning still may not crack the list of the league’s top 10 passers, still will have plenty to learn, still may never own the status of an elite quarterback.

But thanks to 2 1/2 minutes Sunday night, he now has forever.

Have you seen his postgame commercial? Usually these things are corny, but for Eli Manning, it works.

“I living the dream, I’m going to Disneyland,” he shouts into the camera.

It works because, having just watched him, we are already there.

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Bill Plaschke can be reached at [email protected]. To read previous columns by Plaschke, go to latimes.com/plaschke.