BobDigital
Pro Bowl Player
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Dungy being sully made me think about this question but I have never really done a thread dedicated to it that is super in depth. Well may as well now. This is all about rating Manning in the context of other greats. How high on the all time list should he go? Few QBs are more polarizing when it comes to how they should be looked at in NFL history.
In the end his resume seems pretty strong. To sum it up he won 2 super bowls, made 4 appearances, left the game owning a ton of stat records and managed to do it all going against the GOAT QB/coach combo nearly all of his career. On the surface that sounds like a guy who should be a top 5 staple.
Another side of it is he was average in the playoffs going 14-13, constantly under preformed in those games with top offensive talent around him nearly his whole career and got carried more than not to his 2 super bowl championships playing a support role to a very strong defense and only against opponents who were vastly over matched.
So which is true? Well of course neither tells the whole story and the truth generally is always somewhere in the middle. But it also favors more one side than the other and to argue otherwise it simply fence sitting
So here is the take I believe in. I think Manning is a fairly average HOF QB on the whole. His has remarkable strengths but fairly pronounced weaknesses. He is capable of showing grit and determination in the face of opposition but not consistency. He is a guy who wins when he should and loses when he should. In the big spot he too often looked for someone to bail him out.
One of the best arguments for Peyton is he was going against Brady/BB so much and it hurt his chances to win more. To me this isn't a good argument. Yes there were a few years in the Brady/BB run when they were head and shoulders better than other teams. However generally they were usually more than not one of a number of teams in the mix with a good shot most years and it didn't matter if they were in the same conference or not. Eventually you need to beat good teams to win. To complain about competition being too hard in the salary cap era is generally weak sauce. The fact the Pats have won all their super bowls by 1 score shows they were not so dominant that it was unfair. Also the Pats only stopped Manning 2 times from advancing (03' and 04') that is a mere 2 of his 13 post season loses. The fact those 2 super bowl wins were only by 3 points each for the Pats indicates to me that Peyton would not have simply won 2 more had Brady not existed. He would have faced similarly strong teams and lost. The fact he only won 2 had little to do with Brady/BB if we are to be honest.
Another excuse made is his team often let him down. This is simply not the case the vast majority of the time. When you pay offensive players big contracts it naturally takes away from defense. So if you have a stacked offense (including OL) but your defense isn't great you are simply complaining for having to deal with the cap like everyone else.
Also the defenses of the Peyton were usually not that bad. As it turns out his worse Ds were the ones early in his career. He got his 2 worst out of the way in his first 4 years and in 2002 his 0-41 playoff loss was as much on him as his D. Simply he left them on the field all game and if he managed to score and have a few long drives instead of playing as bad as he did that 41 points given up would likely be a more manageable 30-25 points. Simply put his Ds didn't cause him to lose in the playoffs. This can be gone over in detail but it has been touched a lot.
The biggest issue I have with putting Manning too high is his playoff and particularly super bowl performances. The 2 championships he has won he has been carried mostly by a great defense and won them vs 2 teams who likely had no place being there. Chicago and Panthers were both pretenders. When he faces teams worthy of the game Saints and Seahawks he lost. The damning thing is in 4 SBs he has never had a good game. He never had a 90 QB rating or a game where he threw more TDs than Ints. To put in perspective how unimpressive his wins were his D/STs gave up 27 points in his 2 wins but scored 14 for him (1 TD each in both games) for a net of 13 points. This means on average in his super bowls that he won he needed to score an average of 7 offensive points in 60 minutes.
That is how little he had to do to win the super bowls he won. It is hard to hold those up as being particularly meaningful wins when you have to accomplish so little. When asked to do more he lost with a pick 6 late or just got bulled over.
His most impressive post season win was actually 2006 vs the Patriots and it was at home vs a team with probably an equal D but a far worse offense and it took several things going his way to win it. However it is one game he should be given credit for though it was against a team they frankly should have beaten more easily.
Simply put Peyton sets it up but waits for circumstance to knock it down for him. Either by having a stacked team and/or facing bad teams (usually a combo) and only when this happen can he let himself be carried to wins while on the way making some plays. He did a great job putting himself in position to get lucky every year but it is clear to me he didn't really carry his team victory the way the top HOF QBs do.
He to me is clearly in the 2nd and maybe 3rd tier of HOF QBs and should be listed outside of the top 10 as he actually maximized his potential victories with luck of facing the right opponents at the right times. It was never a question of "why only 2 wins" It really is "He was lucky to get 2 wins" if we are too look at it honestly.
Give him less stacked teams or hardest competition in those games and likely he has 1 or 0. I don't see any way with his play it could be argued he could ever have gotten more then 2 or had any left on the board for him and that is perhaps the biggest dent in his legacy. That he maximized his career and only was able to do this.
In the end his resume seems pretty strong. To sum it up he won 2 super bowls, made 4 appearances, left the game owning a ton of stat records and managed to do it all going against the GOAT QB/coach combo nearly all of his career. On the surface that sounds like a guy who should be a top 5 staple.
Another side of it is he was average in the playoffs going 14-13, constantly under preformed in those games with top offensive talent around him nearly his whole career and got carried more than not to his 2 super bowl championships playing a support role to a very strong defense and only against opponents who were vastly over matched.
So which is true? Well of course neither tells the whole story and the truth generally is always somewhere in the middle. But it also favors more one side than the other and to argue otherwise it simply fence sitting
So here is the take I believe in. I think Manning is a fairly average HOF QB on the whole. His has remarkable strengths but fairly pronounced weaknesses. He is capable of showing grit and determination in the face of opposition but not consistency. He is a guy who wins when he should and loses when he should. In the big spot he too often looked for someone to bail him out.
One of the best arguments for Peyton is he was going against Brady/BB so much and it hurt his chances to win more. To me this isn't a good argument. Yes there were a few years in the Brady/BB run when they were head and shoulders better than other teams. However generally they were usually more than not one of a number of teams in the mix with a good shot most years and it didn't matter if they were in the same conference or not. Eventually you need to beat good teams to win. To complain about competition being too hard in the salary cap era is generally weak sauce. The fact the Pats have won all their super bowls by 1 score shows they were not so dominant that it was unfair. Also the Pats only stopped Manning 2 times from advancing (03' and 04') that is a mere 2 of his 13 post season loses. The fact those 2 super bowl wins were only by 3 points each for the Pats indicates to me that Peyton would not have simply won 2 more had Brady not existed. He would have faced similarly strong teams and lost. The fact he only won 2 had little to do with Brady/BB if we are to be honest.
Another excuse made is his team often let him down. This is simply not the case the vast majority of the time. When you pay offensive players big contracts it naturally takes away from defense. So if you have a stacked offense (including OL) but your defense isn't great you are simply complaining for having to deal with the cap like everyone else.
Also the defenses of the Peyton were usually not that bad. As it turns out his worse Ds were the ones early in his career. He got his 2 worst out of the way in his first 4 years and in 2002 his 0-41 playoff loss was as much on him as his D. Simply he left them on the field all game and if he managed to score and have a few long drives instead of playing as bad as he did that 41 points given up would likely be a more manageable 30-25 points. Simply put his Ds didn't cause him to lose in the playoffs. This can be gone over in detail but it has been touched a lot.
The biggest issue I have with putting Manning too high is his playoff and particularly super bowl performances. The 2 championships he has won he has been carried mostly by a great defense and won them vs 2 teams who likely had no place being there. Chicago and Panthers were both pretenders. When he faces teams worthy of the game Saints and Seahawks he lost. The damning thing is in 4 SBs he has never had a good game. He never had a 90 QB rating or a game where he threw more TDs than Ints. To put in perspective how unimpressive his wins were his D/STs gave up 27 points in his 2 wins but scored 14 for him (1 TD each in both games) for a net of 13 points. This means on average in his super bowls that he won he needed to score an average of 7 offensive points in 60 minutes.
That is how little he had to do to win the super bowls he won. It is hard to hold those up as being particularly meaningful wins when you have to accomplish so little. When asked to do more he lost with a pick 6 late or just got bulled over.
His most impressive post season win was actually 2006 vs the Patriots and it was at home vs a team with probably an equal D but a far worse offense and it took several things going his way to win it. However it is one game he should be given credit for though it was against a team they frankly should have beaten more easily.
Simply put Peyton sets it up but waits for circumstance to knock it down for him. Either by having a stacked team and/or facing bad teams (usually a combo) and only when this happen can he let himself be carried to wins while on the way making some plays. He did a great job putting himself in position to get lucky every year but it is clear to me he didn't really carry his team victory the way the top HOF QBs do.
He to me is clearly in the 2nd and maybe 3rd tier of HOF QBs and should be listed outside of the top 10 as he actually maximized his potential victories with luck of facing the right opponents at the right times. It was never a question of "why only 2 wins" It really is "He was lucky to get 2 wins" if we are too look at it honestly.
Give him less stacked teams or hardest competition in those games and likely he has 1 or 0. I don't see any way with his play it could be argued he could ever have gotten more then 2 or had any left on the board for him and that is perhaps the biggest dent in his legacy. That he maximized his career and only was able to do this.
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