FanPost

Is Super Bowl XLVIII a perfect encapsulation of Peyton Manning's career?

I know there were probably a lot of AP readers who found Sunday's game to be incredibly fun to watch while others who don't have the Donkey-hating in their bones were bored silly by it. Pete Carroll just completely outcoached John Fox. The Super Bowl was the funniest thing I've seen since "This Is the End." Manning knows the game so well it's always funny to see his facial expressions when things don't go the way they're supposed to, it's as if he can't process what's going wrong. There was, however, one stat that kind of jumped out at me. You may have read this other places, but Peyton Manning set the Super Bowl record on Sunday for completions (33) in the game. He had 30 more completions than he had turnovers. The game was an ass-kicking of epic proportions, but Peyton Manning was still able to eek out an individual record. Just 24 hours earlier he had been voted MVP of the league an unprecedented fifth time. To get some perspective on that, the person with the next highest number of MVPs is Brett Favre with three. Joe Montana only got it twice (but four rings) and Jerry Rice, voted greatest player in NFL history by that NFL Network countdown show never won it once. Defensive players have only ever won it twice and I was horrified to learn that a kicker was voted MVP in 1982. What kind of sick joke is that. I was watching the game and I started to wonder if the MVP voting would have turned out differently if had taken place the day after the game. Despite a video game-like regular season, would seeing Peyton Manning crap his pants on the game's biggest stage sway voters at all? The sports media is so in love with the guy I don't think it would. I'm not saying he's not a great player, clearly he is. But shouldn't a guy who is frequently spoken of as possibly The Best of All Time not shit the bed when it really counts? The loss in the Super Bowl actually drops Manning below .500 in the playoffs and he almost always played on Colts teams that were good. By contrast, Tom Brady (who has only been MVP twice) has a winning percentage of .720 in the playoffs, which is third best of all time. Does his consistent failure to play well in big games that traces back to college taint his reputation? Or does setting an individual record in the midst of a genuinely humiliating loss make up for it? I don't ever pretend to know what goes on in another guy's private thoughts, but there are times when I wonder if Peyton Manning is as interested in team success as he is his own numbers. If I were picking teams, I'd pick Brady.

This is a FanPost and does not necessarily reflect the views of Arrowhead Pride's writers or editors. It does reflect the views of this particular fan though, which is as important as the views of Arrowhead Pride writers or editors.