Brady feels the agony of defeat

Tom Brady was one of the last ones out of the shower, perhaps hoping some extra hot water would help take the sting out of a crushing Super Bowl loss. In a nearly deserted New England Patriots locker room, he sat, wearily pulling on his boots, the pained look on his face never changing.

A few moments earlier, Joe Montana had walked down the hallway just outside, but there would be no meeting of Super Bowl greats. Nor would Brady join Montana in another way, as a four-time NFL champion - something he seemed destined to be at one point in the fourth quarter.

This was not a night when legacies would be debated. That will have to wait for another time, another place, another Super Bowl. For the second time in the past five Super Bowls, Brady had come up oh-so-short, beaten late once again by the New York Giants and another quarterback starting to make a pretty good name for himself, too.