The highly-anticipated Roast of Tom Brady took place on Sunday night on Netflix, and there were no shortage of high-profile guests who were the victims and facilitators of brutal one-liners that bordered on offensive on more than one occasion throughout the night. Of course, a Roast is all in good fun, and that’s the way one of Tom Brady’s greatest on-field rivals approached the event.
Even though Eli Manning wasn’t in attendance for the Roast of Tom Brady, that didn’t mean that the younger Manning brother wouldn’t take the opportunity to fire off a high-quality, yet hilariously predictable zinger in the direction of his rival via Twitter after the dust had settled from Sunday night’s roast.
“I thought about attending the Roast of Tom Brady last night, but I did not want to Roast him for a 3rd time!!” Eli Manning wrote on Twitter this morning, alluding to the New York Giants’ perfect 2-0 record versus Tom Brady and the New England Patriots in the Super Bowl.
A Tale of Two Super Bowls
At the conclusion of the 2007 season, the Patriots and Giants met in Super Bowl XLII. Famously, New England entered the Super Bowl with a perfect 18-0 record, having already topped the Giants in the regular season, with the chance to bump the ’72 Dolphins from the top spot on the list of the greatest teams in league history. For Tom Brady, it was the opportunity, in 2007, to establish himself as the GOAT. But thanks to a clutch late-4th quarter drive led by Eli Manning, a bonkers catch from David Tyree, and a dominant defensive effort from the Giants, who held the Patriots to a season-low 14 points, New York won outright as 12-point underdogs in what remains one of the biggest postseason upsets in NFL history.
In 2012, Brady would lead the Patriots back to the Super Bowl for the fifth time in his career, and poetically, he would get his opportunity to avenge that loss he suffered at the hands of Eli Manning and the New York Giants four years earlier. But the story remained the same, as the Patriots once again came up short against the G-Men in Super Bowl XLVI.
In total, Eli Manning not only led the Giants to those two wins against the Patriots, but he outplayed the Greatest of All-Time in those two meetings.
Eli Manning (in two Super Bowls versus Brady) – 49/74, 551 yards, 3 touchdowns, 1 interception
Tom Brady (in two Super Bowls versus Manning) – 56/89, 542 yards, 3 touchdowns, 1 interception
All of these years later, the two losses to the Giants remain the biggest black marks in the long and illustrious career of Tom Brady, but given everything that Brady accomplished with both the Patriots and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, those black marks are nothing more than footnotes. But hey, props to Eli Manning for seeing the opportunity to get one last jab in, improving his record to 3-0 against Brady.