IRVING, Texas — Peyton Manning has a championship game to be at next weekend after all. He can go watch baby brother Eli guide the New York Giants.

A few hours after the reigning Super Bowl MVP lost his chance to get back to the big game, the less-heralded, often-criticized member of football's most famous family got the biggest victory of his career. Manning led the Giants past Tony Romo and the Dallas Cowboys, 21-17, yesterday and into the NFC title game.

"I won't get tired of hearing that this week," Eli Manning said. "No one's given us much credit and probably still won't. But that's OK. We like it that way."

Eli, the Manning who doesn't do many commercials, threw two touchdown passes to Amani Toomer and led another scoring drive early in the fourth quarter. While he wasn't great, he was good enough to lead New York to its ninth straight road win and into a 10th road game — at Green Bay, with the winner getting a spot in the Super Bowl. It's the furthest New York has advanced since the 2000 season.

"I was a little nervous," said Eli, who was 12 of 18 for 163 yards. "I know (Peyton) was watching and rooting for me."

Peyton and Romo can commiserate together at the Pro Bowl next month. That's the next game either will be playing.

The elder Manning and the Indianapolis Colts lost at home to the San Diego Chargers in the early game yesterday. Then Romo and the Cowboys blew their chance of advancing, a loss that's even more painful than their exit last January because of what a great regular season they had.

"It hurts," said Romo, 18 of 36 for 201 yards with a touchdown and a sack on each of the final two drives. "It's tough right now."

Just 10 days ago, Eli was 0-2 as a playoff quarterback and finishing a season that's had a love-hate relationship with New York fans. Now he's got two wins, the admiration of his teammates — and an unprecedented amount of public support.

"Everybody goes through their ups and downs and he's on the upswing right now," Toomer said. "We're going to ride him as far as we can go."

"I'm so proud of our players," New York coach Tom Coughlin said. "They really rose up."

The Cowboys were thinking the same about their quarterback. Instead, their season ended with Romo throwing a fourth-down pass into the end zone and cornerback R.W. McQuarters stepping in front of Terry Glenn for the interception. It marked Romo's second straight disappointing finish to a playoff game, following his flubbed hold of a field goal in Seattle a year ago.

Romo came in looking to make up for last season's finish, to prove his sluggish December was no big deal and to quiet everyone who accused him of mixed-up priorities for joining girlfriend Jessica Simpson on the beach in Mexico last weekend.

He couldn't do it, but it wasn't all his fault.

The offense stopped drives with penalties, while the defense kept New York drives alive by drawing more flags. There also was sloppy tackling on defense and special teams, dropped passes and wasted timeouts.

Still, Romo is the marquee man and the most likely to be blamed, though not by Terrell Owens.

Owens, who made good on his vow to return from a high ankle sprain suffered three weeks ago, cried behind dark sunglasses with a quivering bottom lip while declaring, "You can point the finger at him, you can talk about the vacation, and if you do that, it's really unfair. That's my teammate. ... We lost as a team."