Yes, Super Bowl week is finally here. We will be sick of everything by Friday night yelling PLAY THE DAMN GAME, but it is only right to be excited about it for the first couple days. As we have done in years past, we will be numbering our Super Bowl coverage and then posting a big link dump on Saturday so you have it all at your fingertips before the big game. Peyton Manning will go down as one of the most revered quarterbacks of National Football League history. Many people will point to his statistics as well as his overall regular season success, and will see him as one of the greatest quarterbacks to ever play the game. But the weird part about Manning is his noted playoff struggles that has only yielded one Super Bowl win in two appearances. People act like Manning's legacy will somehow be downgraded if he only wins one Super Bowl versus winning multiple ones. This is not accurate as Manning is playing with house money at this point of his career.
With the media today where everything is about 'now', people almost forget Manning won a Super Bowl against Chicago nine years ago. The attitude is Manning is in a must-win situation this Sunday against Seattle Seahawks. It is not like he is Dan Marino here at the end of his career. It reminds me a great deal of Brett Favre in 2007 and 2009 where he already had one Super Bowl, but the importance of the second one put him in some other realm. The sole fact Manning will be in three Super Bowls no matter the result is impressive and deserves to be mentioned when people bring up the debate of the 'greatest quarterback.' Getting there is almost as hard as winning the Super Bowl. Manning doing it with different teams, three different coaches deserves some credit.
Another big part of why this game does not matter for Manning's legacy is his near career-ending neck injury. There were people whom believed Manning would not be on a football field again after his neck injury cost him to miss the 2011 season. There were another group of people whom felt like even if Manning returned to the field, he would never be the same player. Denver's quarterback defied the odds of everyone, and put together two of the more stunning displays of passing in NFL history (Granted all of these stats will be inflated like home runs in late 90's in MLB, but I digress). People seemingly forget Manning suffered a serious injury and came back better than ever.
The only way a dent develops in Manning's legacy is if he plays an awful game on Super Bowl Sunday. If Manning throws three or more interceptions, fails to complete 50 percent of his passes and fumbles the ball away, I think people will point to that performance more so than his Super Bowl win due to the immediacy and everyone remembers a player's worst game versus their best one especially at a stage as humongous as the Super Bowl in New York/New Jersey area. Not to mention, the social media world likes to be assholes versus nice humans so there's that too. Manning playing poorly versus Manning's team losing the game are two entirely different things. If the first one happens, the second one would likely happen as well, but if Manning goes out there with a 300 yard performance in a losing effort, the only people rushing to throw darts at the quarterbacks are the ones whom enjoy low-hanging fruit.
There is a part of me that Manning does not buy into anything I just wrote in this blog post. Rather Manning wants this win so damn bad making sure everyone would shut the hell up about his legacy. While he will never do it, Manning should just do about 10 D-Generation X crotch chops if he wins this game. The win would mean Manning joins the multiple Super Bowl winners club with Tom Brady, Troy Aikman, Joe Montana and John Elway plus a couple others. That's important to him, and he wants to silence the doubters that still exist yet Manning should know he already has his legacy sealed, this is just the cherry on top.
Charlie.
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