Eli silences critics with Giant wins

The game was meaningless, or as meaningless as a game can be against a team on the brink of making history. The only question for the playoff-bound New York Giants was whether it was worth risking injury by playing starters on the off chance they just might make a statement against the New England Patriots.

The starters played, and the statement was made, even though the Giants fell in their final game of the regular season. Behind a quarterback who seemed to gain confidence with each throw, they managed to play the unbeaten Patriots deep into the fourth quarter before losing.

Two playoff wins later, the Giants are in the NFC championship game for the first time in seven years, making the much-maligned Tom Coughlin suddenly look like a coaching genius.

And his equally maligned quarterback is starting to look an awful lot like his Super Bowl champion older brother — with one big difference. Peyton Manning is staying home this weekend while Eli Manning and the Giants have a date with the Packers in Green Bay.

“I don’t know if he silenced the critics. In this game, you’re always going to have critics,” Giants running back Brandon Jacobs said. “I think Eli Manning is a great quarterback. He’s the best I’ve ever played with.”

New York fans would have argued that contention long and often during the last four years. They, like some of Manning’s own teammates, were frustrated by the young quarterback’s inconsistency and his tendency to throw wild passes that often landed in the hands of players wearing uniforms of a different color.

He wasn’t much of a leader, either. If anyone didn’t know already that, recently retired running back Tiki Barber made sure they did at the start of the season when he launched his television career by calling Manning’s efforts to take charge of the team “comical.”

No one on the Dallas Cowboys was laughing Sunday. Manning may have come of age as a playoff quarterback by taking just 46 seconds to lead his team on a game-tying drive in the final seconds of the first half. And this was after the Cowboys had held the ball more than 10 minutes before scoring. They certainly weren’t laughing early in the fourth quarter when Manning engineered a six-play drive that gave the Giants the only lead they would need.

And now Manning, who at 27 is four years younger than Peyton, has a chance to have the last laugh by beating the Packers and putting the wild-card Giants into the Super Bowl, something most would have thought impossible when New York lost its first two games of the season.

“He’s playing with a lot of confidence,” wide receiver Plaxico Burress said. “As long as that continues, we’ll be going to Arizona.”

Most football fans figured the only Manning going to the Super Bowl would be Peyton, whose giant shadow has always loomed over that of his younger brother. Peyton Manning may still be the best quarterback in a family sired by a quarterback, but his chances of adding a second ring to the one he won last year evaporated when the Chargers upset the Colts.

Peyton Manning threw two interceptions in the game, and the dome in Indianapolis grew strangely silent when he misfired several times while trying to lead his team on the kind of last-second drive that has become his trademark.

The Giants will be underdogs in Green Bay, but they were thought to be overmatched in Dallas, too. And while Green Bay will be cold and frosty, the Giants have put together a nine-game road winning streak in a league where teams are happy if they split their games away from home.

So a Manning will still be playing this weekend.

The only surprise is which Manning it is.

X Tim Dahlberg is a national sports columnist for The Associated Press. Write to him at tdahlberg@ap.org.