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Manning cements his legacy with 31-17 loss to Saints
Published: Monday, February 8th, 2010
“Peyton Manning is the greatest quarterback of all time.”
For many years, the national sports media have bombarded us with this proposition.
I have never been a big fan of Manning. After all, he has a likeable personality. His commercials ...
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Congrats, Vikram "Jim Rome" Rao. You know literally nothing about football and are just flat out wrong for 49 reasons.
Reason 1. You make a bunch of laughably spurious claims that I will ignore because you are just a Chargers homer and can't enjoy any championships, but like any good Princetonian, your smugness about a rival's defeat reveals the deep flaw in your contention:
"For reference, Joe Montana’s career quarterback rating was 92.3, Dan Marino’s was 86.4, John Elway’s was 79.9 and Johnny Unitas’ was 78.2. Of course, the stats don’t tell the whole story. These four quarterbacks were the class of their eras."
I agree: Montana is the best QB to play the game. Then we arrive at the rest: Marino didn't win any Super Bowls. Elway won 2 after several horrible defeats in the post-season including a 55-10 loss to Montana's 49ers in Super Bowl XXIV. His first victory had a lot to do with the running game and the poor play of the Packers' supposedly best run defense that year. Unitas played in a very different era of football and only won one Super Bowl. I guess that means he is pretty bad, considering he lost Super Bowl III to Joe Namath.
So, unless you've suffered more concussions than Steve Young, it should be plain that none of those QBs ought to be considered "better" by your post-season standard.
At any rate, sometimes a loss is the team's fault and a win is a team's product. Cf. Trent Dilfer. Blaming yesterday's loss on Manning is like claiming that LdT is not one of the best running backs because he never won the big one. Oh, I forgot you guys blame Norv or maybe Brees was at fault. Clearly they suck.
Reasons 2.-49. You claim to be a Chargers fan. Please refer to the scoreboard of Super Bowl XXIX. That is all.
"I have never been a big fan of Manning. After all, he has a likeable personality."
Are you generally only a fan of QBs who are curmudgeons?
I want you to do me a favor...
Take criticism for being less of a quarterback than Ryan Leaf. Then I want you to take the weight of a dying franchise like the Indianapolis Colts, and put it on your shoulders. Then I want you to make winning seasons with this team... Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that your defense is filled with no name "never-will-be's" and has a horrible tendency to give up large chunks of yardage countless times a game, almost as if they are playing the Prevent Defense every play they're on the field. Keep the team afloat while our coaching staff stiffens up that defense for the next 6 (or so) years. Then later on, I want you to lose your best receiver, and make 2 no name guys into immediate superstars. Your new best receiver, as well as your tight end will help you, but just make them into stars out of the kindness of your heart, not to mention your abilities. While doing all this, I want you to break (x) amount of records, and win 4 NFL MVP awards. I also want you to change the way the game is played on both sides of the ball. I want you to come up with a system that allows you to go up to the line of scrimmage without even taking the time to huddle, then I want you to decipher what the defense is doing and call out a play to counter this defense. Make the defense go crazy with this, and change the way they play as well as practice. I want you to be so good that the clock in your head makes you the least sacked QB in the league for a decade. I want you to be elected to 9 pro-bowls, as well as win the Super Bowl MVP. I want you to take a cut in pay, just to keep good players on your football team.
After doing all this and then some, come tell us again how you feel about Peyton Manning.
As an Indianapolis Colts fan my entire life, I have lived through the good and the bad. I was with the team during the 3-13 days, and have stuck with them through their triumphs of today. When a man like Peyton Manning has done what he has with what he was given to begin with, there’s nothing that you can say to tarnish his legacy. He alone has changed the way the game is played on both sides of the ball, and really has no need for any coach while playing on the field. When teams notice that they are playing the Colts, they don’t say they’re playing the Colts. They say “great, we’re playing Manning this year”. When you think of the team, you think of the most feared QB that has ever played the game. If you can’t touch him, you can’t sack him. If you can’t decipher his audible, you can’t beat him on the play. Plain and simple.
…And to think, it was people like you who said YOUR Ryan Leaf was a better choice than OUR Peyton Manning. Stick that in your pipe and smoke it, rather than the crack rock you seem to be smoking right now.
@AH,
I agree with most of your comments, but Unitas was past his prime during the super bowl era and super bowl III was not a good representation of his abilities, since he had been out most of that season with injuries. If you count his two pre-merger national title wins (out of three trips to the championship game), that would bring his championships to 3 out of 5 shots which isn't bad for an 18 year career.
You take a fairly solid premise - Manning HAS underperformed in the playoffs - and you turn it into a whine. Everytime they fail to make or win the Superbowl, it's because Manning fails. Every time they do make or win the Superbowl, it's because everybody else sucks. If you'd have stuck with analysis, you'd have a good article. As it is, it sounds lie a Charger's fan whining.
AH: John Unitas should not be credited for Baltimore's loss in Super Bowl III. Earl Morrall started the game, and Don Shula did not pull him until late in the 3rd quarter. By the time Unitas entered the game, the Jets already had a 13-0 lead. Also keep in mind that won back-to-back championships in 1958 and 1959 and threw Baltimore's only touchdown pass in the Colt's Super Bowl V victory. When you say that Montana was the greatest of all-time, remember that Joe Cool passed for 40,551 in a West Coast Offense system while Johnny U passed for 40,239 during an era in which offenses were much more balanced and/or run-oriented than they have been in the last thirty years.
Vik: Manning didn't choke. Tracy Porter beat Manning at his own game. He read that pass perfectly and the rest is history. If anyone choked, it was Jim Caldwell. JC is a damn good coach, but he pulled a Jim Mora and played too conservatively. He played not to lose instead of playing to win. On the flip side of that token, Sean Payton played to win. That onside kick changed the game's momentum. If the onside kick isn't converted or if the Saints would have kicked to Indianapolis, Manning would be hoisting his second Lombardi Trophy and all of us would be calling him the best of all-time. Until he wins another ring, Peyton Manning can't make that claim.
GO PATS
Junior,
I hear you. But let me make it clear that I'm not trying to whine.
Like many Chargers fans, I detest Eli Manning for the comments he made prior to the 2004 NFL draft about the Chargers. Despite my dislike for him, I firmly believe that the run he led his Giants on in 2007 was one of the most impressive runs in the history of the Super Bowl. He won three road games, against a solid Bucs team, an incredible Cowboys team, and a Brett Favre-led Packers team in one of the NFL's toughest venues. Then, he beat what many thought was the best team in NFL history in the Super Bowl. Dislike of Eli aside, his run to the Super Bowl was superb and will never be forgotten. Eli might never throw for 4,000 yards and 40 touchdowns in a season, but at least for now, his marquee win is miles more impressive than any game Peyton ever won.
As for Peyton's playoff failures, I accept that I could've gotten more specific about the reasons for losses. To make a long story short, I don't think Peyton's defense has ever failed him when it counted (at least recently - the 41-0 loss to the Jets was pretty bad). The Patriots teams he lost to never put up more than 24 points. The Steelers scored 21. The Chargers scored 28 and 23. And just yesterday, the defense put in another solid effort in holding an explosive Saints team to 24.
And as for the times he's won, do you really consider those victories impressive? Do you really think beating the 2006 Chicago Bears in the Super Bowl is comparable to Eli Manning's victory over Brady's Patriots? Or even Roethlisberger's wins over the Cardinals and Seahawks? The Bears were a fundamentally flawed team that could never throw the ball and we all knew it. Aside from the opening kickoff, Chicago was impotent during that game.
I also don't think my affiliation with the Chargers important to the content of this article. I'm not trying to make any arguments for or against the Chargers or any of their players here.
Finally, I'm not trying to say Peyton Manning is terrible, bad, or average. I believe that he is great. I had his Colts picked to win yesterday, 31-21, and I thought he'd finished with three touchdowns and no picks. I actually had believed, at least for a few days, that this would be his time to break through win a marquee game. And though I did not mention in the article, I do recognize that the control he has over the offense is second to none. The fact that this year's coaching transition went so smoothly is testament to this fact. But as it stands right now (things could change of course), to mention him in the same breath with Montana or Elway would be blasphemous.
@some of the posters. I was being sarcastic about Unitas. Clearly, I'm not saying that Unitas should be blamed for Super Bowl III. I'm saying that Vikram's logic about Manning would indicate that Unitas should not be considered "one of the greatest QBs," which anyone who isn't tainted by Chargers homerism would know to be stupid.
Also, Vikram: Again with Elway, really? He was two for five in the Super Bowl including a 55 to 10 loss. And it's not like Elway was single-handedly carrying the team in his last two years. Manning is 1 for 2 in the SB out of 10 playoff appearances with only 100 total passing yards less than Elway in the post-season. How is that not comparable? If anything, Manning bears a striking resemblance to Elway.
@IPA. I think that comparing 1950s NFL to 1980s or 2000s/2010s NFL is a fairly ridiculous proposition anyway because the game was very different. At any rate, this isn't baseball where individual stats are so important. I would note that while the NFL's offenses of the time were more balanced or run heavy, even the best defenses (1958 Giants, for example) were extremely primitive and less physical. That meant that the best of players like Unitas, who could certainly compete today, do have statistical inflation.