Peyton Manning's "Legacy!"

FWIW, Wilt won two championships.

 

And, like Wilt Chamberlain, Peyton Manning will still be one of the Top 3 of all time. He just won't be No. 1.

 

Yep.

Yeah joe, I knew he won two, but I think they fall in the same "shoulda won more" category.

 

If we're going simply by rings, Peyton isn't even the best Manning, right?
Thing is, even if Peyton matched (or exceeded) Montana's ring total, he still has the two losses on his resume. This year's in particular -- fair or not -- will make it hard for him to ever knock off Montana, IMO.

 

Would anybody really take Eli over Peyton?

 

But we're not, and no serious person would argue that we should.

It's a part of the equation. A part. To me, it kind of proceeds like this: You clear the statistical/regular season threshold first. Peyton has done that. Brady has done that. Montana has done that. Eli has not. Roethlisberger has not. So among those elites, then you start looking at rings.

 

I'm with Mizzou (from one of the other threads) that this loss significantly hurts Manning's legacy.

Denver came in hailed by many as not only the best offense in football but maybe the best offense in football history, and it was unquestionably Manning's show -- he was the guy making the calls, the checks, the decisions, the throws. He was the film maniac, the guy who made all these receivers better, the one who actually walked through the pass routes himself with Demariyus Thomas to show him the way they're supposed to be run.

It was all Peyton -- OK, not all, but he was surely the largest presence in that offense, larger even than the coordinator. So when that offense lays a gigantic egg in its biggest game, Peyton takes the hit. The Broncos didn't adjust to how the Seattle defense was playing them? Isn't that what Peyton is supposed to be best at -- seeing what the defense is giving up and making adjustments to exploit that?

So, yeah, while I understand Denver's entire team was awful and the Seahawks played great, I also know Manning's greatest of all time case kind of went crashing off the rails Sunday.

 

I think LTL nailed it.

If Manning retires without winning another Super Bowl, the perception is he should have won more titles than he did.
I feel the same way about Brett Favre.

Elway gets a bit of a pass on that because the perception is that the three teams he was on that lost in the SB were only there because he carried them there. He won one he wasn't supposed to win and another that he was.

 

This is why I tend to just throw out rings. I think we can agree Eli Manning isn't a great regular season quarterback. There is a huge sample of regular season games that say he is a meh QB, but he has two rings. Playoffs are more or less a shit show.

 

If you are discussing who is the single greatest player ever to play the single most important position in all of team sports, taking into account what happens in the biggest games is fairly vital to the discussion.

 

No, the playoffs are where your opponent is always at least a pretty good team, and usually a very good team. As opposed to the regular season.

 

The reasons people give to denigrate Manning say a lot more about them than him. He's one of the greatest ever at his position and a lock first-ballot Hall of Famer. What more does any player have to be? As far as the postseason goes, Manning is one of 10 or 11 QBs to start in three or more Super Bowls. He had to have won some playoff games to get there.
Knocking great quarterbacks is as old as the sport. Otto Graham didn't call his own plays, etc. It's always been stupid, too. But in Manning's case, it's like he drives his critics crazy for some reason. It seems so personal, and frankly, I never thought he had enough personality to rub people the wrong way like that.