The Onion: 'John Elway Casually Mentions To Peyton Manning How Great it Was Going Out on Top'

Source:The New Democrat 

I’m going to be serious for a minutes, all right fine maybe two minutes just to say that Peyton Manning even if he is the best regular season quarterback of all-time, which would be like being the best team of all-time that didn’t win the Super Bowl in the NFL, Peyton who I respect as a great quarterback, is simply overrated. Peyton Manning is a fan favorite of the stats and now generation. People who judge athletes by their numbers and the fact that they are playing now, must mean they are better than players who played before simply because of that.

If you judge players especially quarterbacks by how well they play in the playoffs and their record in the playoffs and not how many times they threw for four-thousand yards and thirty touchdown passes, Peyton would be pretty far down on the greatest quarterbacks list. Even if he is the best regular season quarterback of all-time. And keep in mind, all of Peyton’s personal success as a quarterback as far as stats has not come in the passing age, which was the 1980s and the 1990s. But the Roger Goddell age where the NFL has simply decided that offense is more important than defense for financial reasons. And have made it very difficult for defenses because of the rules to be successful.

I mean how many great quarterbacks do you know of have losing records in the playoffs and are headed to the Hall of Fame if they are not already there? Peyton Manning would be one, can you name any others. Tom Brady could easily tell Peyton, “look, you have better numbers, but I have the numbers that count the most. I’ve won twice as many playoff games that you have and have won 2/3 of my playoff games. I’ve played in five Super Bowls, won three of them and have a winning record in them. But you look better on SportsCenter, YouTube, social networks and so-forth. So congratulations, but I’ll keep my victories and championships”. I doubt Brady has ever said that, but he could and would be right about that.

Is Peyton Manning one of the best quarterbacks of all-time and lets say that is top ten if not twenty, dumb question and he’s probably somewhere around ten for me, if not further back. And of course he’s a top two or three quarterbacks of his era. Only behind Tom Brady and Brett Favre, because of what Brady and Favre accomplished both in the regular season and playoffs. But I’m getting tired of hearing Peyton mentioned as the greatest quarterback of all-time and I’m not that comfortable about him as the greatest regular season QB of all-time. Simply because of the era he played in. And he’s certainly not the best quarterback of all-time and neither is Tom Brady.