Eli Manning is beginning to resemble one of those baby-face gangsters from the old movies. Kid looks cute from a distance but up close it turns out he’s got stubble on his chin and robbery in his eye, and when the adults aren’t watching he pulls out a cigar and bag of loot. You’ve got to wonder at the buried toughness inside this boyish-looking character, who chooses to live in Hoboken instead of a comfortable suburb. On the surface he seems to be “just a sweet child,” as his father Archie describes him. Yet here he is in his second Super Bowl, and all that niceness increasingly looks like a mask for something implacably ambitious.
A second Super Bowl appearance has exposed Manning once and for all for what he really is: one of the league’s great competitоrs. He is finally getting his due. But just try telling him so.