Is Statue of Liberty in Giants’ playbook?

And on the day after, the country rested, needing time to de-ice from conditions so cold in Green Bay that football fans required parkas and mittens just to watch on TV at home, needing time to warm to a concept that might take all of the next two weeks to fully comprehend:

Eli Manning and Tom Coughlin have qualified for the Super Bowl.

In the same year.

On the same side.

The nation -- and that includes Wisconsin as well as considerable portions of New York and New Jersey -- isn’t quite sure what to make of it, which helps explain the early landslide of a betting line: the New England Patriots over the New York Giants by as much as 14 points in Super Bowl XLII in Glendale, Ariz.

Worth pointing out:

* Those billboards and newspaper ads featuring a decapitated Statue of Liberty are not graphic predictions of what New England is going to do to New York on Feb. 3. They are advertisements for a horror film of another kind, “Cloverfield,” in which a monster (not wearing a hooded sweat shirt) is caught on hand-held camera (not technically a spy-cam) terrorizing citizens in Manhattan (many of them presumably Giants fans).

* The Giants have been here before. And their most recent Super Bowl experience is worth re-examining before getting carried away, one way or another, about Project Eli/Coughlin: Mission Improbable.

Seven years ago, the Giants also were underdogs to a team being flattered by best-of-all-time talk. Or half a team, anyway. The 2000 Baltimore Ravens arrived in Tampa for Super Bowl XXXV with a defense that had given up a record-low 165 points during the regular season, basking in media hype that dared to call the Ravens a better defensive outfit than the mid-’80s Chicago Bears, the Steel Curtain-era Pittsburgh Steelers or the Doomsday Dallas Cowboys of the 1970s.

Meanwhile, the Giants showed up with Kerry Collins as their starting quarterback.

Many initially suspected a rout, but then Super Bowl week lurched forward, the Giants gave a few good news conferences, and writers started sitting around and thinking way too much about how it could fall apart for the Ravens. (Granted, Trent Dilfer starting at quarterback for the Ravens sparked a lot of that thinking.) By kickoff, many had talked themselves into not only thinking the Giants had a chance, but that they would win the game.

Then Collins went out and had four passes intercepted and the Giants lost, 34-7.

These next two weeks could go very much the same way. Pundits, experts and oddsmakers will rethink the Giants, who have spent the last three weeks giving the country some strange new food for thought. Such as:

* The Giants have won their last 10 road games. No other team in NFL history has done that.

Of course, six of those victories came against Atlanta, Miami, Detroit, Chicago, Philadelphia and Buffalo. But the last three were playoff games at Tampa Bay, Dallas and Green Bay.

The Giants defeated the NFC’s two best hopes on their home fields, including the Packers on Sunday in the league’s third-coldest championship game on record. Regardless of how you feel about the NFC, the Giants deserve to represent the conference in the Super Bowl.

* Manning has not had a turnover during the postseason.

Breaking down that amazing sentence into statistical bits, Manning has thrown 85 passes this postseason, completed 53 to Giants and none to opponents. This is a better stretch than New England’s Tom Brady, who had three interceptions during the Patriots’ 21-12 AFC championship game triumph over San Diego.

Maybe it was youth, maybe it was metabolism, maybe it was adrenaline, but Manning handled the brutal Lambeau Field conditions better than Brett Favre, who had far too many minutes of inactivity on the sideline watching the Packers defense turn Manning-to-Plaxico Burress into an incredible simulation of Bart Starr-to-Boyd Dowler.

Burress, who finished with 11 catches for 154 yards, had it right when he yelled at the Packers’ bench that Green Bay cornerback Al Harris “can’t cover me!” End result: Manning is headed to Arizona, Favre could be headed into retirement.

* Final score from East Rutherford, N.J., Dec. 29, 2007: Patriots 38 Giants 35.

There is video evidence, captured fairly recently, that proves the Giants are capable of playing with the Patriots for four quarters, even leading them by 12 points with five minutes left in the third quarter. Manning threw four touchdown passes in that game, and seemed to develop new confidence -- almost a whole new on-field personality -- with the performance.

These are factors that will be weighed and played in the media in the bloated buildup that unfortunately awaits us all. So, too, will the fact that the Patriots won each of their three Super Bowl titles by three points.

Then again, Bill Belichick will have two weeks to game-plan, and Manning will have two weeks to wonder “Is this really happening?” so you never know.

The Giants can draw inspiration from a team that began the 2002 Super Bowl as a 14-point underdog, yet came away a winner on a last-second field goal.

That team was the New England Patriots.

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christine.daniels@latimes.com