Manning prepares for victory as he parks talk of legacy

AMERICAN FOOTBALL:PEOPLE CAN'T be serious. People are talking like Eli Manning's legacy can surpass that of big brother Peyton Manning. Seriously?

It seemed like for the past decade people were talking about whether Peyton Manning was better than Joe Montana or John Elway or Johnny Unitas.

Since the 2007 season, when the New England Patriots were 18-0 going into their Super Bowl against Eli’s New York Giants, the fervent debate became Tom Brady v Peyton Manning.

And now, the talk leading into this Super Bowl XLVI rematch of Brady’s Patriots and Eli’s Giants is if Eli beats Brady again Sunday in Peyton’s home stadium, Eli’s legacy will have catapulted beyond his great older brother.

“Your legacy is based on what?” said Deion Sanders, the Hall of Fame cornerback and NFL Network studio analyst. “It’s based on wins. It’s based on Super Bowls. It’s not based on statistics. If you want to talk about legacies, then statistically you’d have to mention Dan Marino. But when you’re talking about the greatest ever, I always hear Elway. Or I always hear Montana. So Eli, if he wins this game, he would win that particular battle because he would do something his brother wouldn’t do. He won twice.”

For his part, Eli Manning warns against contemporaries judging history. Peyton Manning was on pace to set all the NFL passing records until a neck injury forced him to miss the entire 2011 season. “In my opinion, since I’ve been watching football, I haven’t seen anybody play at a higher level than he has,” Eli Manning said during a Super Bowl media day on Tuesday.

“It’s always been my goal to get to his level of football. To get to his level of play. I’m just amazed at some of the throws he’s made in his career.”

Peyton averaged 4,218 passing yards over a 13-year span when 4,000 passing yards meant something. Even with Eli throwing for nearly 5,000 yards this season, he’s still averaging 3,447 yards in his eight-year career.

And, it’s not like Peyton hasn’t won. He has won one Super Bowl and played in two. In the 12 seasons after his rookie season, Peyton Manning led the Colts to a 138-54 record, or an average of 11 victories a year. When Brady missed virtually all of 2008 with a knee injury, the Patriots still went 11-5 without him. When Peyton Manning missed all of 2011, the Colts went from perennial play-off team to qualifying for the number one draft pick.

Yet, because Brady and Eli Manning are playing in the Super Bowl and Peyton Manning missed the season with injury, folks with short memories suddenly have Peyton looking up to both.

“How you might define a legacy might be one thing,” said Michael Irvin, the former Dallas Cowboys’ receiver who also works for the NFL Network. “How everybody else defines a legacy is going to be another.

“Eli, especially if he wins this Super Bowl, his legacy is going to be bigger than Peyton’s, not because of the numbers on the field, but because of the number of people who are going to be talking about Eli in New York, compared to the number of people talking about Peyton in Indy.”

See how knowledgeable football men are talking about Eli passing Peyton? This is not easy to digest. It’s difficult to think Eli is better than Peyton in anything, much less as an NFL quarterback. Peyton is more personable. Makes better commercials. And Peyton is older, which means everything in brother warfare.

“His most popular move was he’d pin me down and he’d take his knuckles and knock on my chest and make me name the 12 schools in the SEC,” Eli said. “I didn’t know them all at the time when I was six or seven. I quickly learned them. It was a great learning technique.

“Once I figured those out I moved on to, I think there were 28 teams in the NFL at that point. So I had to get my studying up for that. The one I never got was I think there’s 10 brands of cigarettes. So when he really wanted to torture me and I had no shot of getting it, that’s when I started screaming for my mom or dad to come save me.

“As a player you don’t think about your legacy,” added Eli. “You prepare to play games. You prepare to win games. We have an opportunity to win a championship, and that’s all I’m thinking about.”

– (The Denver Post)