Manning out-guns fabled Favre
GREEN BAY, Wis. — Eli Manning kept making plays. So did the Giants' defense.
Finally, Lawrence Tynes got in the act, kicking New York into the Super Bowl.
For anyone who has doubted Peyton's little brother or thought the Giants had no business in the NFC championship game at frostbitten Lambeau Field, chew on this: A Manning is going back to the Super Bowl riding a wave of road wizardry.
Manning repeatedly put the Giants in position to win Sunday, and when Tynes came through at last with a 47-yard field goal in overtime, New York had itself an improbable 23-20 victory over the Green Bay Packers.
Now comes Mission Impossible: beating the undefeated New England Patriots in two weeks in a Super Bowl matchup hardly anyone saw coming.
"You never know when you're going to get your opportunity, when something is going to click, when you're going to get hot," Manning said. "You're just playing your best football at a certain time and that's what's happened with us.
"Every sort of thing has been thrown at us and we've handled it very well, I think."
What will be thrown at the Giants (13-6) in Glendale, Ariz., on Feb. 3 is perfection. The 18-0 Patriots, who finished their unblemished regular season with a 38-35 victory over New York, are partly responsible for Manning and his team making a remarkable turnaround.
With nothing to gain in that game, New York played its regulars and went all out. Manning was sensational with four touchdown passes, the beginning of a renaissance that has seen him go from unpredictable to, well, Peytonesque.
It's also seen him lead the Giants to three consecutive road playoff wins without committing a turnover; the Giants have won 10 straight away from home overall.
And this one, in minus-3 degrees (wind chill of minus-24) earned New York its first Super Bowl trip in seven years. A win in two weeks and Eli will match Peyton for NFL titles — and the Manning family will have consecutive championships.
"I saw on TV earlier this week nobody picked us to win this game," said Plaxico Burress, who had a career-high 11 catches for 154 yards. "It was kind of funny that we won nine straight games on the road and still, coming in here everybody was talking about how cold it was going to be, the weather, the wind chill, coming to Lambeau — we didn't even have a shot. Watching it on TV, all you were doing is you were laughing.
"We came here, got the job done when nobody expected us to, and came up with a win."
A win the hard way, for sure.
Tynes had two misses — a 36-yarder at the end of regulation following a bad snap, and a 43-yarder with 6:49 to go — before nailing his long winner 2:35 into OT.
He got another chance in overtime after Corey Webster intercepted a struggling Brett Favre, the kind of mistake Manning often made before his recent turnaround.
"I screwed it up twice," said Tynes, who sprinted straight to the locker room after his decisive kick, leaving his frozen teammates to celebrate.
