By IAN O'CONNOR
The (Westchester, N.Y.) Journal News

EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. - The ball cut a true path through the white-hot lights and Tiki Barber finally surrendered to the nor'easter of emotions raging behind his eyes. He said he was on the verge of an emotional meltdown, much like a father-to-be pacing outside the delivery room, and so it was fitting that Barber reacted to the sight of Matt Bryant's kick like he reacted to the sight of his own newborn child.

Barber last sobbed when he saw Atiim Jr., his A.J., enter the world last summer like the New York Giants entered the playoffs Saturday: head-first amid a chaotic swirl of ecstasy and pain.

Tiki Barber was the best player and the worst player on the field, the prettiest and ugliest, the strongest and weakest, the most vulnerable and the most likely to succeed.

He was the perfect leader of the flawed but fearless Giants, the only contending team in creation that would have a big-play star with no size or breakaway speed, a star who could lose three fumbles and suffer a near-death encounter with a fourth and still manage to deliver the game of his professional and amateur lives.

"I've never been over 200 yards," Barber said, "not in high school, college or the pros."

He ripped the Philadelphia Eagles for 203 rushing yards, for 73 receiving yards, and for 29 overtime yards on the six consecutive carries that allowed Bryant to exorcise the demons of his own misadventures, and yet Barber spent the game dreaming up his "Dewey Defeats Truman" headline.

"I was fully prepared to come up here," he said at his postgame podium, "and say, 'We didn't make the playoffs because of me.' "

Only the Giants are going to Tampa, Green Bay or San Francisco - somewhere, anywhere, for a game that will reward their survival instincts like no silly reality show could. The Eagles didn't even need three minutes to mute a blood-seeking, towel-waving crowd with their 20-yard touchdown off a double-reverse. They intercepted Kerry Collins in the end zone on his first drive, then watched two Giant linemen draw highly questionable holding penalties to wipe 14 points from the board.

Mostly, the Eagles watched Barber tear them down and build them back up, the lilliputian Giant playing so big and so small in his dirty black shoes with the superhero streak of red.

"We rode you all the way here and we're going to ride you all the way through," Eric Studesville, the running backs coach, barked at Barber. "I know you're a good player. This isn't you."

Jim Fassel, so sure to be Parcellsed out of his job, so deaf to the voices calling for his headset at 6-6, claimed he ignored aides who were suggesting that Barber should be benched in favor of Ron Dayne, aides Fassel declined to name.

"I'm going to sail with him or sink with him," the captain said, and so his ship took on more water before it docked at 10-6.

With the Giants at the Eagles 3 in the second quarter, Barber betrayed a long, promising drive by fumbling into the arms of Brandon Whiting. This was hardly his most serious offense. After Jeremy Shockey's leaping, grabbing, taunting touchdown, Barber's fumble at his own 26 with 4:34 left in regulation ultimately put the Giants' season on the foot of Philadelphia's Pro Bowl kicker, David Akers, who faced a 35-yarder for the win and home-field advantage through the playoffs with the benefit of this comforting truth: He had made 14 of 15 attempts from 30-39 yards.

Akers made it 14 for 16. Shaun Williams intercepted the ball in overtime and Fassel went back to the same man who had ravaged and revived the Eagles all day. Barber went for 7 yards, 5 yards, 10 yards and 6 yards, making the fans high on the possibilities. Suddenly, without warning, the back who had lost three fumbles in the first 15 games, nearly lost his fourth of Week 16.

Officially, Kerry Collins was given the fumble. Unofficially, the quarterback said he wanted to send a swift kick into his teammate's rump until Barber pointed to his chest in that familiar, my-fault way.

"I just couldn't hold the ball," Barber said.

So he held his breath. When Bryant got his overtime chance from 39 yards out, this after delivering enough shanks to inspire Fassel to say, "You owe me one," the Giants kicker by way of a Texas pawn shop gave his boss a bargain.

"It's a whole new ballgame now," Fassel said.

A whole new season for the underdog player who, in 1997, started out with the underdog coach.

"Coach Fassel and I have been through a whole lot," Barber said after he'd hugged Fassel on their way to the playoffs.

"Thanks for sticking with me," the player said.

"It wasn't a hard call," the coach responded.

Everything would come full circle on this day, the 44th anniversary of another overtime classic - the Colts' victory over the Giants that only introduced pro football to the core of American culture. Collins would revisit his own fumbling follies from last year. Fassel would make another dumbfounding move in a season full of them - How could he possibly punt in Eagles territory at the close of the first half? - and still display his remarkable talent for staying alive.

And then there was Barber and Bryant embracing five weeks after the running back publicly embarrassed the kicker for contributing so ingloriously to that forever loss in Houston.

"It takes a lot to make me cry," Barber told Bryant. "But when that thing went through I couldn't help myself."

He's one of the toughest small players the NFL has ever seen, a man who carried the football with a broken arm during the Giants' Super Bowl sprint two years back. Barber plays to honor the name his mother gave him - Atiim Kiambu means "Fiery-Tempered King" - after absorbing her newborn's ear-splitting wails.

As a baby and a father-to-be, Barber handled the delivery room the same way. His tears are shed in victory, not defeat, and so Saturday he refused to let A.J. Feeley make him cry like A.J. Barber had.

The Giants Stadium scoreboard reported that the home team was going to the playoffs, and that its most vulnerable star was always its most likely to succeed.

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