With his two-sack performance in Super Bowl XLII, Justin Tuck set the pace for a dominant New York Giants defensive line that bruised and battered Tom Brady en route to securing a Super Bowl upset for the ages.
The Super Bowl matchup is set:
Now that the Giants and New England Patriots are set to battle for the Lombardi Trophy once again, Tuck knows a championship could hinge on the play of the Giants' front four for a second time.
"I think every game we've played this year, the D-line has set the tone, whether that be good or bad," Tuck said during his Tuesday media session. "It's all about stopping the head dog. On offense, the head dog is the quarterback. For most teams, if you get a lot of pressure on the quarterback ... they don't have as much success. It starts with us."
Tuck acknowledged, however, that it will take more than just a carbon copy of his team's game plan from their Week 9 win over the Patriots in New England -- or from 2008 -- in order to knock off Brady.
"Every time you play Tom, you've got to go back to the drawing board," Tuck said. "He's the type of quarterback, by the first quarter, he probably has a good sense of what a team wants to do to him, what a team wants to do to his offense.
"If he gets a bead on what you want to do before he snaps that ball, it's going to be pretty much impossible to stop him," Tuck added. "... It's going to be a chess match."
