Jason La CanforaCBS Sports NFL Insider
Peyton Manning is incredible, but give me Joe Montana or Tom Brady
<TIME class=storyDate pubdate="" datetime="2016-03-07T16:49:30Z">March 7, 2016 11:49 am ET</TIME>
The premise of trying to rank icons from different eras is inherently flawed. There are no right or wrong answers, only opinions, and there are no shortage of cogent arguments to be made for a small group of players. So this column is not meant as an attempt to change your mind or convince you that my thoughts are correct. I am merely sharing my ideas.
With
Peyton Manning retiring Monday and the Manning/
Tom Brady saga finally over, and Manning's legacy already under the microscope a month after playing his final game and going off a Lombardi winner for the second time, debates will rage on. Decades from now I suspect dudes and gals will be sitting at bars with nothing worth watching on the television and this question will be broached and, in the spirit of "Tastes great!/Less filling!" sparks will fly as the merits of both Hall of Famers are dissected.
Personally, Manning would not be my pick as the greatest to ever do it. He'd be third at best, and possibly fifth. He is in the conversation along with Tom Brady, Joe Montana (my one and two) and Johnny Unitas, Dan Marino and John Elway (numbers don't tell the story of how he played the game and the one-man army that he so often was). A second
Super Bowl title is certainly a wonderful way to punctuate an epic career, but the manner in which it was done -- barely a game manager at the end -- also resonates for me. So give me Montana -- the best big-game passer ever. Or give me Brady, who still may have another Lombardi or two in him and who has rarely if ever had a cast around him on offense like Manning did in his prime. I would take both over Peyton, and position Nos. 4-6 on the rankings remain up for debate as far as I am concerned.
And there is nothing wrong with that.
That is the most elite of elite company one could aspire to. That is the pinnacle of the sport. Would it land Manning on my NFL Mount Rushmore? No, the other quarterbacks and guys like Jerry Rice and Jim Brown and Reggie White would keep him off there. But you know what? Who cares? It's just my list and there are plenty of people who would make the claim that Manning is the greatest to ever do it and that he belongs first on that Mount Rushmore and you could certainly make the case if you so desired. I am simply choosing not to do it.
I would probably give him the distinction as the greatest regular-season quarterback of all time, and the way he orchestrated the game at the line of scrimmage and out-thought the opposition and managed to return from catastrophic injury and perform at the top of his game all make him unique. But the nine one-and-dones in the postseason and the fact that in the two Super Bowls he did win he was far from the central figure involved (Bob Sanders was the MVP of that postseason for the
Colts, without question, and
Von Miller clearly was this time around) count for something as well.
His career marks in Super Bowls are unsightly, averaging just 6.46 yards per pass, with just three touchdowns and five picks in four games and carrying an ugly 77.4 rating. His pick-six against the
Saints turned that game forever more with the Colts heavily favored, and, again, he was less than stellar in his two wins (albeit bestowed with the MVP against the
Bears).
When we are talking about the greatest ever, that particular stage becomes increasingly important, and while you can make the case Montana had a superior cast around him, teams could also play much more physical defense back then and the rules were different. Montana's
Super Bowl record -- 4-0, with 9.36 yards per pass!, with 11 TDs, 0 INTs and a near-perfect 127.8 rating -- speaks volumes, to say nothing of all his signature postseason moments like picking out John Candy in the stands and The Catch and I could go on and on.
I just don't get that same feeling about many (any?) of Manning's playoff runs. They don't conjure the same images for me. In the years he won I think more of Sanders and Miller and in several others I can recall the Colts losing to some badly-flawed teams (a
Chargers club without their quarterback for instance) with Manning no small part of the losing equation. As for Brady, in his six (6!) Super Bowls, he has been more efficient than explosive (6.5 yards per attempt), but has 13 TDs to just four INTs and has a gaudy 95.3 rating himself. And he is still far from done.
Yes, Super Bowls alone do not determine a career, but they help define the way legends are remembered and it's difficult to argue that Manning was better than Brady in the clutch (he does have a 3-2 playoff advantage over him head-to-head), much less even try to compare him to Montana in the playoffs. But you never really worried about Brady's teams going out of the tournament right away, even after securing a first-round bye. Manning's teams seemed in perpetual peril.
Brady and Montana didn't get to play their home games in domes -- or have other dome teams in their division as Manning did with the Colts -- and, I will admit, the fact that they didn't come into the NFL as the top overall pick and had to scratch and claw a little more for their opportunity is also not lost on me. It's not why I prefer them, but it does enter the equation for me on some visceral level, biding their time and then pouncing when the opportunity to play finally arose.
You could certainly claim that both Brady and Montana benefited from spending much of their career with better coaches -- Bill Belichick and Bill Walsh are the best of their generations and among the very best to ever do it -- though the fact Tony Dungy is entering Canton as well perhaps quashes that somewhat (regardless of what you may think of that vote). Ultimately, it may be Manning's own accomplishments from September through December that work most against him, at least with me.
Sustaining that brilliance against the best of the best of the best in the postseason may be an impossible standard to expect. But the reality is, Manning owns virtually every career regular-season passing mark one could ever hope to attain, and when compared to his own postseason output, the disparities leave a mark. His regular season passer rating (96.5) is substantially better than his playoffs (87.4) and while he averaged 2.4 touchdowns per interception in the regular season, that mark shrinks to 1.6 more TDs to INTs in the playoffs.
More than anything else, however, for me, it is the one-and-dones. In the 15 years Manning reached the playoffs, nine times he failed to win a game. In those nine games, his team was the favorite eight times, and they were a prohibitive favorite in at least five of them. In those nine games he failed to throw for 230 yards in five of them. He threw more than one touchdown in only two of them, and in those games where he did throw multiple touchdown passes (3, two times) he also tossed two picks to go with them.
He played no small role in arguably seven of those defeats, and while it is a team game and he is not alone (sometimes a shoddy run game; often a so-so defense) the fact that he was the highest-paid player in NFL history through much of his career in a salary cap era creates certain limitations in team-building as well). He has earned roughly $100M more than Brady on contracts alone, I would point out.
Brady, meantime, is 22-9 in the postseason (Manning finished 14-13), he has reached the playoffs every year he has been a starting quarterback (save for 2009, when he tore his ACL, and except for 2002, when they went 9-7 and missed out after an improbable
Super Bowl win). Brady has gone one-and-done just two times in 13 years in the postseason, and was undone by top defenses in both, playing very poorly against the 2010
Ravens and so-so against Rex Ryan's 2011
Jets (Ryan's defenses have tended to give him fits).
The man has played in 10 AFC Championship Games since taking over for Drew Bledsoe in 2001, to go with those six Super Bowl appearances. He gets my nod. Frankly, it's not even all that close.
Some might say viewing Manning through that prism is unfair, but for me, when we are talking the very best of the very best over the entire storied history of this league, one would be remiss not to consider those failures when making evaluations of this degree. And that is where, when judged against this elite collection of peers, and judged against his own body of work in the regular season, Manning comes up short. Of course, it's not all that short, and it's conversation that will wage on for years and years. But I don't see my mind really changing. And I totally understand if nothing you've read here changes yours.
