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Their Super Bowl meeting four years ago was incredible, an instant classic with an iconic moment.

Now it's time for the encore as the New York Giants play the New England Patriots in the football game brassy enough to count by Roman numerals. And while it's rare that a sequel surpasses the original, most of America is expecting this 46th Super Bowl to be a good game.

They should. Once known for blowouts, the Super Bowl has shown a recent tendency to be downright suspenseful.

This year's game might not be as great as the Giants' victory over the Patriots four years ago. After all, David Tyree won't be on the field for the Giants, so he can't catch a ball against his helmet while a New England safety attempts to inflict all manner of bodily harm. But the past decade has shown there is every reason to expect a competitive, entertaining game.

That's a marked difference from that stretch in the 1980s into the '90s when the Super Bowl was more of a misnomer. The game was rarely good, and there were years it might as well have been played in a woodshed, considering the abject beatings that were handed out.

Of the 10 Super Bowls played in the 1990s, only two were decided by fewer than 10 points, and four were decided by 20 or more. Blowouts became so routine that it wasn't a joke to say the commercials were the most entertaining part of the broadcast.

That was then, this is now: The outcome of each of the past four Super Bowls has been in doubt late into the fourth quarter. Two of those games have been decided by touchdowns scored in the final minute.

Compare that to the 1980s when the Raiders — then in Los Angeles — beat Washington 38-9, the first in a string of five consecutive Super Bowls decided by 19 or more points.

It has been nearly 10 years since we've been subjected to a bona fide blowout in the Super Bowl. Tampa Bay beat Oakland 48-21 in January 2003, and no team since the Bucs has held a double-digit lead throughout the fourth quarter.

Since then, the Super Bowl has come to embody the competitive balance that has made the NFL so attractive. There's an uncanny tendency for the game to come down to the two final minutes.

In each of the past four Super Bowls, a trailing team has had the ball in the final five minutes with a chance to tie the score or take the lead. In two cases, the result was a game-winning score.

The Giants' 17-14 victory over New England four years ago was just such a nail-biter. New York had the ball at its own 17-yard line with less than three minutes to play when Eli Manning led a 12-play, 83-yard touchdown drive that was keyed by Tyree's 32-yard third-down catch. When Plaxico Burress caught a 13-yard pass for the game-winning touchdown, it was the third lead change of the fourth quarter.

Four years later, two of the league's signature franchises will play again in the sport's biggest spectacle.

New England is making its seventh appearance in the Super Bowl in the past 30 years, the most of any NFL team in that time. The Giants are making their fifth appearance in that time, tied with San Francisco and Denver for second-most.

Will Patriots-Giants Part Deux be as great as their first Super Bowl showdown? That's going to be hard to top, but history points to the probability that this will be a good game.

Danny O'Neil: 206-464-2364 or doneil@seattletimes.com.

On Twitter @dannyoneil

The NFL's championship game used to be known for blowouts but has seen closer games recently. A look at the Super Bowls, divided by the first 15, the second 15 and the most recent 15, with average margin of victory, games decided by 7 points or fewer and games decided by 14 points or more:

Super Bowls/Margin/7 pts/14 pts

I-XV/13.3/4/8

XVI-XXX/20.1/3/8

XXXI-XLV/10.4/8/5