There's more to the article, but I'll post the part about Manning with a link.
http://msn.foxsports.com/nfl/story/n...the-crossroads
There is no more difficult job in sports writing than criticizing Peyton Manning.
He epitomizes what we want in a high-profile athlete. He loves and respects the game. He’s committed and well-prepared. He’s highly skilled, fun to watch and maintains an air of humility. He is easy to like and respect.
However, his accomplishments are rarely placed in their proper perspective. He just won his record fourth Associated Press MVP award. When he retires, he’ll own just about every meaningful career passing record and some experts will argue that Manning is the greatest quarterback of all time.
I can’t go there. Not now. Not without significantly more postseason success.
Saturday night, when the Indianapolis Colts face the Baltimore Ravens, Manning will play the most important game of his career, his 16th postseason start. A poor performance and a loss severely damage Manning’s reputation as a champion.
Yes, he’s battled a big-game image problem since college, and his lackluster individual performance during the Colts’ 2006 Super Bowl run did little to quiet the critics who question Manning’s ability to execute efficiently when pressure is the highest.
But this goes deeper than Manning’s 7-8 playoff record, 22-17 TD-to-INT ratio and 10-point drop in QB rating during the postseason (95.2 to 85.0).
Before I go on, marinate on these comparative numbers:
Kurt Warner: 9-3 record, 31-13 TD-to-INT, 93.7 to 104.6 QB rating.
Tom Brady: 14-4 record, 28-15 TD-to-INT, 93.3 to 85.5 QB rating.
Brett Favre: 12-10 record, 39-28 TD-to-INT, 86.6 to 85.2 QB rating.
Dan Marino: 8-10 record, 32-24 TD-to-INT, 86.4 to 77.1 QB rating.
John Elway: 14-8 record, 27-21 TD-to-INT, 79.9 to 79.7 QB rating.
Joe Montana: 16-7 record, 45-21 TD-to-INT, 92.3 to 95.6 QB rating.
That’s right. Manning compares most favorably to Marino, a great player who dominated the stat sheet but had trouble winning and producing at the same high level in January.
Now, let’s take the discussion a step farther. Manning is playing in the QB era, which is somewhat like baseball’s steroid era. The rules of the game so heavily favor the quarterback and the passing game that statistics are being distorted.
It’s nearly illegal to touch the quarterback now. Since the beginning of the new millennium, the NFL has passed a series of rules aimed at assuring the players most likely to receive $100 million contracts don’t end up on injured reserve. In the mid-1990s, the league installed radio transmitters in the helmet of QBs and renewed its commitment to stop defensive backs from touching receivers more than five yards downfield.
The purpose of the rule changes since 1978 (when the league first outlawed receiver-DB contact beyond five yards) was to create the Arizona-Green Bay shootout we watched last weekend. Kurt Warner and Aaron Rodgers completed nearly every pass they threw.
Throwing for 4,000 yards in a season used to be a very big deal. No one did it in 1997. Two guys did it in 2001. This past season, 10 QBs surpassed the 4,000-yard barrier. In 1990, three quarterbacks -- Jim Kelly, Warren Moon and Joe Montana -- completed more than 60 percent of their passes. Nineteen years later, 21 quarterbacks -- including future career backups David Garrard, Alex Smith and Chad Henne -- connected on at least 60 percent of their throws.
Playing quarterback is still the most difficult job in all of sports, but rule changes have made the task much easier. No one has benefitted more than Peyton Manning. He’s collected four MVP trophies in seven years by taking advantage of league’s insistence on providing quarterbacks PEDs -- performance-enhancing defenses.
The lone remaining venue where a QB can distinguish himself from the pretenders is the postseason.
Manning needs a good showing and a victory on Saturday. If not, he’s a Dan Marino upgrade and a slice below Brett Favre. That’s not bad company. But it’s not Montana, Elway and Brady. , Manning could fall behind Kurt Warner, if Warner wins another Super Bowl.
Whitlock has the same gnawing feeling I have about the game on Saturday
4. Prediction: Ravens 23, Colts 21.
This is about karma. The football gods are going to make Indianapolis pay for spitting on history and quitting on perfection. The Ravens jump to a big lead and hold on down the stretch. Ray-ven Lewis and Ed Reed both create critical turnovers. The Ravens get their licks on Manning despite dropping eight into coverage half the game.
I know this thread is about Manning but damn Kurt Warner has some pretty nice playoff stats. Would you consider Warner an underrated playoff QB? Hall of Fame worthy?
He's a lock. I didn't even think that was a question.
Bull . Colts will curbstomp these pathetic birds and their purple got asses.
"I want Favre to win. He makes my job easy...If he loses, Ted Thompson gets to pretend he did nothing wrong. If Favre makes it to the Super Bowl, I get to write another column ripping Thompson. It’s all about the quality of my column"
JT will love this article..
He'll throw the author of this article under the bus and say he's a stupid . If it's not enough he'll throw whoever read the article under the bus and call them stupid to believe it. If it's still not enough he'll throw his family under the bus.
Anything for PEYTON
Everything Whitlock wrote about Manning is true. And it's not me being a Patriot homer, because all year long Whitlock has been trashing Tom Brady big time, and he's pretty much been spot on with that as well.
Manning’s 7-8 playoff record, 22-17 TD-to-INT ratio and 10-point drop in QB rating during the postseason (95.2 to 85.0).
JT WHAT IS YOUR EXCUSE
oh and it is football season so you should have already responded since you do not get into basketball when nfl is still going on
JT has an 80 hour work week to deal with, he doesn't have time to post all day like you.
im suprised he didnt say cause he isnt hip hop he will lose
Jt will say do you always say there is more then the quarterback righting
righting?
what the is this .....
Whitlock really needs to find a good editor. He has good ideas but goes for too much every damn time.
Oh ? What's that? Manning and Brady have the same postseason QB rating? Since according to our resident NFL expert ducks, QB rating is the first line of defense when rating QBs, either Manning undeservedly gets a lot of for his postseason play, or Brady's an overrated chode who won three Super Bowls not with bad ass QB play but because his coach cheated and he had a stud defense (Also see B. Roethlisberger, 2005, 2008).
This. Whitlock is a ing chode. This game is important for the Indianapolis Colts' overall legacy, not just Peyton's. They quit on a perfect season so in my mind there is more pressure to win this game than there would have been if they were 16-0. The trade-off to that is they'll have a healthy team for not going at the last two games balls-to-the-wall. They had full participation in practice from everybody not on IR this week, so at least the rest was able to get everyone back to 100%.
He'll throw the author of this article under the bus and say he's a stupid . If it's not enough he'll throw whoever read the article under the bus and call them stupid to believe it. If it's still not enough he'll throw his family under the bus.
Anything for PEYTON
Rivers has a 3-3 playoff record, 7-7 TD-to-INT ratio in the playoffs, and a 16.1-point drop in QB rating during the postseason (95.8 to 79.7)
DUCKS WHAT IS YOUR EXCUSE
ducks will say do you always say there is more then the quarterback righting
Brah idk if you intended this but I can't understand that, I just got home and I'm relatively drunk.
see post 13 in this thread
LOL Ball State
LOL Colts
off Whitlock.
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