Strahan enjoys the last words

New York Giants defensive end Michael Strahan, who never met a microphone he didn’t like, sat at his interview podium after the game and seemed as if he would have been happy answering questions all night.

Did he think the Giants could dominate the New England Patriots’ offensive line the way they did?

“We felt like we could do that,” he said. “We’ve done that all year. I guess everyone thought that we’d done it all year, we led the league in sacks, we do it in the playoffs, and supposedly when we get against the Patriots we’re supposed to not be able to pass rush? That’s what we do. We stop the run as well. Our guys do what we always do. . . .

“We felt like we could do it from the beginning and did not listen to anyone who said we couldn’t.”

Strahan seriously considered retirement last summer and sat out training camp pondering his future. As for now?

“I’m actually thinking about the parade that moved from Boston to New York City,” he said. “And I’m thinking about the beach out in California. And I’m thinking about spending time with my kids, and that’s it.”

Finally, asked what he’ll say to people who predicted a Patriots win, Strahan said: “We could sit here and go, ‘I told you so,’ but that’s not this team. We didn’t do this to say, ‘I told you so,’ and prove you wrong. We did it to prove it to ourselves that we could do it. This was for us, man.”

Coming into the game, Patriots quarterback Tom Brady figured he was going to face pressure if only because the Giants had led the league during the regular season.

But Sunday proved to be especially tough on Brady, who was sacked five times, hurried nine times and generally roughed up.

“You score 14 points,” he said. “I think that was our lowest total of the year and that got us beat.”

The Giants shared the wealth when it came to hitting that quarterback. Justin Tuck had two sacks; Strahan, Kawika Mitchell and Jay Alford had one each.

“I’m sure he hasn’t been hit that many times in one game . . . so that was part of our game plan,” Mitchell said. “We mixed in some blitzes, and then our D-line just did what they had been doing all year long.”

Although the most-valuable-player honors went to quarterback Eli Manning, they just as easily could have gone to a few other Giants. Tuck was one of those. In addition to his two sacks, he forced a fumble, and seriously hampered what Brady could do.

Asked if he thought he’d be seeing another great Brady comeback down the stretch, Tuck said: “Actually, I was thinking about an Eli Manning great comeback, honestly. We were running up and down that sideline saying, ‘Believe.’ In the heat of the game, you never really allow yourself to think you’re not going to win it.”

Manning is the 27th different starting quarterback to win a Super Bowl, but the first to wear No. 10. That means that every jersey number between seven and 19 is now represented on the list of Super Bowl-winning quarterbacks.

Manning said he could see, just by looking in his teammates eyes, that they were confident they would win.

“They knew,” he said. “They knew that we’ve been good in the two-minute drive all season. We’ve made big-time wins and been in these situations before as well as in practice. We knew we could make it happen. We saw that we had to do it. Those guys did everything we expected for us.”

Archie Manning is one proud father. Not only have both his sons quarterbacked teams to Super Bowl victories, but they did it in consecutive seasons.

Manning said the most impressive part of Eli’s performance was “he just hung in there. He got a pick early, and Eli never seemed to panic. The Patriots really brought the heat. We’ve seen Patriots teams for years and Peyton will tell you that at clutch time, one of the great trademarks of the Patriots’ defense is pressure. They can bring it when it counts. They brought it in that [final] drive.”

The Patriots’ loss preserves a place in history for the 1972 Miami Dolphins, who remain the only team to go undefeated through the regular season, the playoffs and the Super Bowl.

New England and Miami had been endlessly compared over the last few weeks, with former Dolphins players split over which team was better.

“Obviously, we’re proud to still be the only undefeated team in the history of the National Football League,” former Miami running back Jim Kiick said. “We’re proud of it. Why shouldn’t we be?”

Don Shula, the coach who led the Dolphins to a 17-0 record that season, offered condolences to Patriots Coach Bill Belichick.

“I know it’s a tough loss and I know how much this game meant to Bill,” Shula said. “He’s a student of football history and he would have loved to be the first one to go 19-0.”

sam.farmer@latimes.com

david.wharton@latimes.com