Peyton Manning's "Legacy!"

Cris Carter kept saying that it's about rings. Maybe ESPN could have gotten a stronger commentator to say that? Then Trent Dilfer, knowing where his 2000 season bread was buttered, talked about the importance of a team.

Or some such. No idea what Skip and Smith said on First take.

In three Super Bowl runs, Peyton is 8-2 in the playoffs. Other than those three years, he is 3-10. This is the Football Gods frowning upon "CLASSY!" QBs who love to throw for scores on the goal line to pad their stats.

 

We needed a whole new thread for this, did we?

 

I think it's a good thread idea, actually. I bet it goes for a while.

The 3-10 record in non-Super Bowl years feels kind of stupid to me, no? I bet most QBs have a terrible playoff record cumulatively in non-Super Bowl years. It's kind of like the stats you'll see along the lines of, "Cabrera only batted .248 in Tigers losses!"

Joe Montana was 4-7 in non-Super Bowl years.

Tom Brady 5-7.

Troy Aikman 2-5.

Brett Favre 8-10.

John Elway 1-5.

Ben Roethlisberger 1-3.

One thing about Manning, for whatever it may be worth, is that I don't think his teams barely ever played in that wildcard round, so he never had many opportunities to fatten the playoff record. Right away, he was playing against real competition with a team that won a lot of games in a perpetually awful AFC South.

 

This board can't even figure out if Russell Wilson is better than Nick Foles.

 

Who listens to Cris Carter about anything?

 

Everything factors in.

Manning is, IMO, the greatest regular-season QB of all-time, or at least of the last 40 years. He is not on that level in the postseason, but he does have one ring and has made it three times, which is an accomplishment.

Five MVPs carry a lot of weight. How many times has be finished second? I think at least twice... That's insane...

 

Carter should remind us how many rings he has.

 

Not only that, Carter should also remind us how many post-season runs he helped destroy with his sideline barking the moment he wasn't getting the ball enough.

 

I tend to just throw out Super Bowl rings when looking at these things. I guess I can see the appeal of judging someone's "legacy" by them, but I find it hard to judge an individual with a team accomplishment.

 

The fact that so many of the games Manning's teams have lost have been due to underperforming offense has to work against him, though.

As I've said ... Wilt Chamberlain. Won the championship, great player, great team, something missing in the postseason.

But I wouldn't put a whole lot of it on this game. Manning did make one glaring mistake, his first interception was a ball he lofted over the middle to a spot he couldn't see because of the D-lineman jumping. Even without that, though, the Broncos were DOA.

 

For any other position on the field, you would be right. But it's the quarterback. I'm not saying you don't examine a playoff record in context, but wins and losses matter. They're part of it, for that position, in particular. Probably moreso than for any other position in sports except for Basketball Superstar.

There's a reason Dan Marino doesn't come up in these discussions, nor should he. Manning has three contemporaries who have quarterbacked multiple Super Bowl winners, including his kid brother. If he wants to battle Montana or Unitas for the GOAT tag, then he needs another ring. This is elite company now, and this kind of parsing is part of it.

 

Peyton Manning's career, at this rate, is most going to resemble Brett Favre's.

Manning will have the edge, obviously. He'll have most of Favre's passing records by Thanksgiving at the latest, he has two more MVPs and one more Super Bowl appearance.

I always thought Favre escaped most of the criticism he deserved for how he did in the playoffs during the second half of his career. He definitely wasn't as criticized as much for it as Manning has been.