Phillip Rivers’ gutsy performance wasn’t enough, and Brett Favre had one of his worst games of the season. Both will be watching the Super Bowl from the comfort of their own recliners in a couple of weekends.

The New England Patriots’ win in the AFC title-game surprised nobody. The New York Giants’ victory in the NFC championship game surprised everybody.

Tom Brady was not sharp, which is rare, and Eli Manning was exceptionally on point, also pretty rare. New England’s best receiver, Randy Moss, caught just one pass for the second-straight playoff game. Plaxico Burress, New York’s top pass-catcher, made 11-receptions for 154-yards in the weekend’s most remarkable performance.

And yet the Giants will enter the big game without being given a chance by smart football people. While I don’t consider myself a smart football person, I won’t give them a chance either. But that’s okay with them I’d assume, because I picked against them against them in Dallas and in Green Bay, and they won both of those two games to get to where they are now.

The G-men have relied heavilly on an above average running game all season long, but it was Manning’s 254-yard performance that won them the conference championship yesterday. The Patriots were the NFL’s best passing team this season, but without the back-to-back 122-yard games New England’s gotten from tailback Laurence Maroney, they wouldn’t be heading to Arizona.

A lot of people will use New York’s week-17 loss to the Patriots as evidence that they can hang with the Pats’. I’ll use that game for the opposite. You see, the Giants played their best game that night, and still lost to a less than perfect Patriot team, which is why I don’t think they’ll fair too well in two-weeks.

That said though, if the team’s secondary can get healthy over the next couple of weeks, they’ll at least have a decent chance at slowing Brady’s bunch down. Aaron Ross is going to have to be closer to 100% than he was yesterday though, and R.W. McQuarters is going to have to be off the feild more than he is on it, defensively, too.

The only thing the Giants will have going for them, is the fact that New England’s perfection won’t matter when the two team’s take to the field in Glendale. 

That’s right, the fact that New England will come into the game 18-0 couldn’t be more trivial come game-time. The Super Bowl isn’t reward for the first 20-weeks of the season. If it were the Patriots would be having their parade today. All that matters is that the Giants are better for four quarters on February 3rd.

And if the Giants are able to be better for 60-minutes in a couple of weeks, they will have authored one of the great stories in the history of sports.