Yes, we can do this again.

Nine wins and seven losses. That was the regular season. If you want to explain how the 2011 Giants won the Super Bowl, you have to let those seven losses into the conversation.

This team made us work. They got to 6–2, lost four in a row, and were 7–7 after losing to Washington in December. There was plenty to complain about, and Giants fans are rarely short of volunteers for that assignment.

Then the Giants won six straight games, counting the playoffs. The last one ended with another Lombardi Trophy and another New England team wondering what had just happened.

You can understand why I enjoy getting to the end of this story.

Start at your own one.

On Christmas Eve against the Jets, the Giants trailed 7–3 and faced third-and-ten at their own one-yard line. There wasn’t much room behind them for anything else to go wrong.

Eli found Victor Cruz. Cruz turned it into a 99-yard touchdown.

There are plays that change the score, and then there are plays that let a team take a full breath again. That one gave the Giants the lead in a game they won 29–14. They beat Dallas 31–14 the next week to win the NFC East.

Nine and seven was enough to get in. What they did after getting in was their responsibility.

Atlanta. Give the defense its afternoon.

The Giants beat Atlanta 24–2 in the wild-card round. Two points for the Falcons, and those came on a safety. Our defense kept their offense off the scoreboard.

I love both Eli playoff runs for the way the whole team competed. This game belongs in that telling. The quarterback can be playing beautifully and still need the men on the other side to make their stops. Against Atlanta, they gave us a whole afternoon of them.

Green Bay. Their record didn’t catch the ball.

The Giants went to Green Bay next and beat a Packers team that had gone 15–1. Hakeem Nicks caught a 37-yard touchdown on the last play of the first half. The final was 37–20.

Fifteen and one is a hell of a regular season. It doesn’t protect you from Eli and Nicks making that play. Watching our guys compete against a team like that, in their stadium, is exactly why every game in these runs stays with me.

By then we had seen what this coach and quarterback could do in January. Here they were, giving us another one.

San Francisco. Eli kept getting up.

Then San Francisco made the NFC Championship Game a test of how much punishment a quarterback could take and still keep playing.

Eli was sacked six times. He kept getting up. That is one of the images I want beside the prettier throws when we talk about him. The job included standing back in there after the last play had given him every reason to wish somebody else could do it.

In overtime, Jacquian Williams forced Kyle Williams to fumble on a punt return. Devin Thomas recovered. Tynes made the 31-yard field goal. Giants, 20–17.

Another trip to the Super Bowl. Another meeting with New England. Same coach and quarterback on our side, with another group of players earning their own place in the story.

A different game with familiar tension.

In Indianapolis, the Giants went ahead 9–0. New England answered and eventually led 17–9. Anybody who had settled in for an easy afternoon had misunderstood the general terms of being a Giants fan.

Two Tynes field goals brought New York within 17–15. Chase Blackburn intercepted a Brady pass intended for Rob Gronkowski. The Giants kept themselves close enough for one drive to change the result.

With 3:46 remaining, they had the ball at their own twelve. Eighty-eight yards separated them from the end zone.

Eli went to Mario Manningham along the left sideline. Thirty-eight yards, with the ball placed where Manningham could catch it and keep his feet in. New England challenged. The catch stood.

Go back and watch the feet. Then watch the throw. There is very little room for either man to be anything less than excellent on that play.

Fucking A, what a throw. That is one of the plays I mean when I say Eli played as well as you could play in those postseasons. With the championship there to be won, he put the ball there.

Even scoring had to be complicated.

The throws to Manningham. Plural. After the 38-yard catch, Eli found him for sixteen more yards and then two. The famous one got us to midfield. They still had to keep moving, and those two men kept doing the work.

New England let Ahmad Bradshaw through toward the goal line to preserve time for Brady. Bradshaw tried to stop short but carried into the end zone. A six-yard touchdown, fifty-seven seconds left, and a 21–17 Giants lead after the two-point try failed.

Now we needed the defense to finish again.

Brady’s final throw into the end zone fell incomplete. The Giants were Super Bowl champions. Eli was the MVP for the second time, finishing 30 of 40 for 296 yards, a touchdown, and no interceptions.

A second title gives the whole era more weight.

The 2007 championship was so extraordinary that people could spend forever talking about how unlikely it was. Four years later, Coughlin and Eli had another one.

Cruz, Nicks, Manningham, Bradshaw, Blackburn, the defensive front, the special-teams players who put us in position to win at San Francisco. This team had its own work to do. It couldn’t borrow a single point from the earlier championship.

That is what I love about keeping all eight stories together. You can see the similarities and still give every team its own afternoon. Some champions dominate from the start. Some leave you arguing with the television deep into December.

The 2011 Giants made us wait for the best version of themselves. When it arrived, they took it all the way.

Eight championships. Four Super Bowls. Plenty to tell the next kid who asks why we care so much.