INDIANAPOLIS -- No, no, the Giants and New England spent the week insisting, revenge on the Giants for that 17-14 upset in Super Bowl XLII plays no role in this game. Why, look at the rosters! It’s not even a rematch of the game that cost the Patriots a perfect 19-0 season.

Yes, yes, we know the parallels, they said: the Giants slipping into the playoffs; upsetting the Packers; winning an overtime NFC title game; the Patriots coming in on a double-digit game winning streak, yet not being terribly impressive in the AFC championship game; and the regular-season game showing that the Giants can beat New England or at least give a tough run.

This is a new team, the Giants kept saying. This is a new team, the Patriots say. Revenge? Rematch? Media talk. No players think.

His opinion

“I think it’s crap,” said former New England safety Rodney Harrison, now an NBC NFL studio analyst. “If you played on that 2007 team, you had an opportunity to go 16-0 something that’s never been done in the National Football League. Opportunity to go 19-0 and to lose that game, of course, you’re devastated. I carried that burden for months. The humiliation. A sense of not being depressed, but maybe just a tad bit over that.

“I accomplished a lot in my career, but that was the lowest point of my career because I felt like I let so many people down,” Harrison said. “But to have an opportunity to make history and you’re a competitive person, yeah, you’re thinking about that 2007 championship.”

Same quarterbacks, New England’s Tom Brady and the Giants’ Eli Manning. Same head coaches, Giants Tom Coughlin and New England’s Bill Belichick. Some of the same Giants defensive front — Justin Tuck and Osei Umenyiora — that hounded Brady four years ago and in October.

So the teams have to forgive everyone for not buying that this isn’t just a rematch. It’s the first double rematch Super Bowl — a rematch not just of a previous Super Bowl with many of the same core players, and a rematch of a regular-season game.

Another shot

And, coincidentally, that previous Super Bowl gave the Giants a second shot at the Patriots after blowing a lead on New England in the 2007 season finale. After controlling most of that game, New York felt renewed confidence, marched through the playoffs and faced the mighty Patriots without fear.

This is the 13th Super Bowl to rerun a regular-season game and the numbers say the edge goes to the Patriots, whose last lost when the Giants trumped them 24-20. Regular-season losers won seven of 12 rematches.

“Anytime you have a rematch with a team and you lost to that team by a close margin, the team that lost has the advantage,” said Hall of Fame wide receiver Michael Irvin, now an NFL Network analyst. “All of us in our everyday lives we’re going to search ourselves more in defeat than in victory. In victory, we’re too damn busy celebrating. In defeat, we’re going to search ourselves. In a close defeat, you take that film and chew on it and chew on it. It sticks with you.”

Irvin’s fellow Hall of Famer and NFL Network analyst Marshall Faulk says, however, “I always believe that in the rematch the team that won has the advantage. They’re the puncher. They outpunched the Patriots. So the Patriots have to come up with a counterpunch.”

True Super Bowl rematches come rarely. The Dolphins faced Washington in Super Bowls 10 years apart that shared only Dolphins coach Don Shula and offensive guard Bob Keuchenberg. Heck, Washington’s middle linebacker in Super Bowl VII, Jack Pardee, already crashed and burned out of two head coaching jobs by the time the teams met again in Super Bowl XVII.

Similar game

When Dallas and Pittsburgh got together in Super Bowl XXX, only barely changed uniforms connected the game to the almost eerily similar Pittsburgh-Dallas games of Super Bowl X and XIII.

When the Bengals went to their first Super Bowl — yes, that used to happen — and lost to the 49ers, their lineup included a loquacious rookie wide receiver Cris Collinsworth. Seven years later, Collinsworth caught passes from a different quarterback, blocked for different running backs, but that didn’t mean seeing the 49ers again meant nothing.

“There were only four or five of us still around,” he said. “So, it is a new team. For those guys, they’ll never forget. Some of those guys who played in the [first] Super Bowl played really well in the [second] Super Bowl. You could tell there’s a maturity level to it.”

Then again, perhaps everybody wearing red, white and blue discounts revenge because it’s overrated as a motivator — in the true Super Bowl rematches, the same team won both times.