NEW YORK GIANTS head coach Tom Coughlin said "mental toughness" explained how his team could find the late season burst of form that led them to win the Super Bowl over the New England Patriots.

The Giants had been 6-2 in the regular season before losing four games in a row and after their season was in danger of falling apart they needed to win their last two regular season games to progress to the playoffs.

Victories over the Green Bay Packers and San Francisco 49ers pushed the Giants to their second Super Bowl against the Patriots during Coughlin's charge and on Sunday they emerged 21-17 victors.

As with their victory over New England four years ago and with many of the more memorable wins in the era of Coughlin and quarterback Eli Manning, it was a late, late show from New York and the coach said that indicated the key to his team's success.

"Mental toughness, resiliency, resolve. We keep playing, we keep fighting, and we're highly competitive," he said.

"We do have great trust in each other, great belief that we can finish, and that if we keep playing one play at a time as hard as we can go that we will find a way to win."

Coughlin said the way the team had handled injuries throughout the campaign also illustrated their winning character.

"I will tell you this: from the earliest part of camp moving forward, particularly what we went through seemingly every week, we would have an injury that would be, under normal circumstances, devastating," he said.

"I think what would happen is that the players fed off me and I fed off the players."