There was one roadblock, though. The young quarterback Vacchiano wanted to be the focus of his book.

“The problem was, for three years I was building this story around Eli Manning,” says Vacchiano, the Giants beat writer for the New York Daily News. “And publishers kept laughing at me saying, ‘Why in the world would anybody want to read a book on Eli Manning?’”

That changed, of course, with the Giants’ still-stunning 17-14 win over the previously undefeated New England Patriots in Super Bowl XLII in February. Suddenly, Manning was the toast of the NFL, free from the shadow of his older brother and the perfect subject for a book.

Thus, Eli Manning: The Making of a Quarterback ($24.95, Skyhorse Publshing) was published in September. The bulk of the book is culled from interviews Vacchiano did with Manning as part of his Daily News duties.

“If I could get a sit-down interview with him for 45 minutes, I would do it and I’d be lucky if a third of the interview got into the paper,” Vacchiano says. “So I would save all the other stuff. I asked him a lot of questions about what goes into his preparation and his life and the pressure he feels and all of that.”

Insights from people within the Giants organization are another key to the book. One fact that stunned the writer was learning that Wellington Mara didn’t want to make the 2004 draft-day trade that brought Manning to the Meadowlands.

“Days before the draft, he called [former Giants GM] Ernie Accorsi and said, ‘If you make this deal, I’m not going to be very happy,’ which was stunning to me,” Vacchiano says. “The organizational credo was always, ‘We all believe in this deal, we’re all 100 percent behind it.’ And here’s the most influential member of the organization having reservations because he wanted Kerry Collins to be the Giants quarterback going forward for the next four or five years.”

The discovery was not only great for the book but was satisfying for Vacchiano as well. “You always feel good about it as a reporter when you get something like that and it makes some of your best sources say, ‘How did you get that? We never thought that would get out,’” he says.

Playing in New York, every move Manning made was under scrutiny. He led New York to a divisional championship in his first full campaign (in 2006) and a playoff spot the next season. Still, he was criticized for his inconsistency, and his leadership skills were questions (most notably by former teammate Tiki Barber when the running back became an NFL analyst last season).

Through all of that, Vacchiano says there was just one instance of Manning showing any signs of the pressure getting to him. It came during a players-only meeting in 2006 when the team was falling apart and Manning learned some of his teammates weren’t giving the effort he thought they were.

“Tim Hasselbeck [former Giants backup QB] told me this story… and said Eli came out of that meeting and said to him, ‘I can’t believe all this is happening and I’m the one taking the heat for it,’” Vacchiano says. “It’s the only time I ever heard anybody [say] that Eli Manning even acknowledged the heat.”

Today, Manning’s place in New York sports history is secured. Not only by quarterbacking was may be the biggest upset in Super Bowl history but because of that incredible pass he made that led to David Tyree’s equally incredible catch that setup the game’s winning touchdown.

Manning has always had the ability to perform late in games, something Accorsi (who orchestrated the trade that brought Manning to the Big Blue) saw early on. In his foreword to the book, Accorsi writes about watching an aging Johnny Unitas when he worked for the Baltimore Colts in 1970. He asked a scout if he thought Unitas was through.

“[The scout] turned to Ernie and said, ‘Ernie, you evaluate the quarterbacks in one way: ‘Can they lead the time down the field at the end of the game, with a championship on the line, and get them in the end zone.’”

”That’s what Ernie saw in Eli Manning and obviously he was right,” Vacchiano says. “The Super Bowl proved it; when the championship’s on the line, he can bring the team down the field and get them into the end zone with the best of them. And that by the way, was the 10^th time he had overcome a fourth-quarter deficit and turned it into a win. So clearly he has some of that fourth-quarter magic.”