Mike Celizic

All we’re going to hear about all week is Brett Favre and Eli Manning, Eli Manning and Brett Favre. It’s a good story line — the grizzled veteran and everybody’s hero and the kid brother of Peyton Manning trying to prove he is worthy of his own last name.

But unless one of them suffers a total meltdown, the quarterbacks aren’t going to be the difference in the NFC Championship Game. Like the divisional games the Packers and the Giants won this weekend, it’s going to be defense and the ground games that will carry the day.

Sure, the quarterback play will be important. But both teams will try to control the ball on the ground and let the air attack work off the rushing game, especially if we’re lucky enough to get another snowstorm.

Favre, the supposed gunslinger, threw just 23 times against Seattle, and he was marvelously efficient with those throws, completing 18 of them for 173 yards, three touchdowns and no interceptions; he was sacked just once for zero yards lost. If it weren’t for that Brady guy in New England, it would have been the quarterbacking performance of the weekend.

Manning was even more parsimonious with his passing in the Giants’ upset of Dallas. He threw just 18 times, completing 12 of them for 163 yards, two touchdowns and no interceptions; he was sacked three times for -23 yards.

Green Bay, especially, relied on the run, with Ryan Grant overcoming two early fumbles and finishing with 201 yards on the snow-covered tundra. The Packers were going to win this game no matter what, but Grant’s running made it almost ridiculously easy.

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New York didn’t run nearly as well, but did accumulate 90 yards against the Cowboys. Together with a terrific second-half defensive effort, they kept the pressure off Manning, who’s finest moments came with less than a minute left in the first half, when he led the Giants to the touchdown that tied the score at 14 and set up New York’s second-half heroics.

The Giants, especially, can’t allow the story line that unfolds in Green Bay to match the one your local newspapers and sports shows are going to be pushing. Manning has played far beyond what was expected of him against first Tampa and then Dallas. And one of the keys to his play has been the fact that he’s played both games on the road in mild weather.

In Green Bay, the weather can be a lot of things in mid-January, but one of them isn’t likely to be balmy. Manning has admitted he takes no pleasure in playing in the wind and rain and sleet of the Meadowlands. And the last thing you want to hear any athlete say is that he doesn’t perform well in certain conditions. Once that’s in his head, it’s hard to get out.

So, if the game falls on Manning’s shoulders, it’s going to mean that the Giants are losing and all else has failed. And if it’s come to that, New York probably isn’t going to win.

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