"If he wins on Sunday, if Eli Manning pulls off another fourth-quarter comeback or merely beats the Patriots, his two Super Bowl titles will land him on a pedestal reserved only for New York's greatest sports icons.

Already, Eli has entered into sacred one-name-only territory in the city, joining the likes of the Babe, Joe D., Yogi, Mick, Willis, Walt, Reggie, Mess and Derek. No Giant or Jet quarterback in history has ever piloted his teams to two championships, in the biggest of games. Phil Simms came closest, but he watched from the sidelines with a broken foot while Bill Parcells' team captured a second title in Super Bowl XXV.

So this is fresh territory, and Manning already has won the affection of the city's fans by winning one ring, and by employing Jeter-like tactics to politely, blandly deflect the most charged questions leveled by the media. He has defined grace under pressure, extending plays in the pocket and somehow, impossibly, keeping his head while everything around him has gone terribly awry.

You ask Manning about the pressure he faces from all this, from the fans and the occasions and the blitzes by opposing linebackers. He is unfazed by any of it.

"Pressure is something you feel when you're unprepared," he said this week. "I've been very prepared for each game."

The words from him over the years have grown more forceful, more confident, even if they don't ever quite sound arrogant. That talent he has for creating yardage out of chaos, for extending plays, is something he hones in reps every day at practice. And that is the ultimate New York survival skill, isn't it? Harnessing the disorder and the energy, turning them into constructive gains.

Eli is made for the city, it turns out, and it was a very good thing that he and his family scared away the Chargers at the 2004 draft."