Sportandfashion-news Super Bowl Preview: 1.) Peyton Manning's Bizarre Legacy

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.

Sportandfashion-news Packers Preview: San Francisco vs. Green Bay

There is a chance the season could end like it began with Green Bay losing to San Francisco. This is the fourth time in the last two years Green Bay and San Francisco have played each other with the Niners taking all three games. It is not officially a rivalry renewed (Remember how many times they played in the 1990's) until Green Bay can win a football game against this generation's San Francisco team.

It is really hard to point to anything from the first game and say 'Well that's going to be the difference in this one.' When they played in September, I sweated out a horrible hangover after a fun guys weekend in Green Bay, and it was about 75 degrees in Wisconsin with the same sort of weather in San Francisco. Now, it has a chance to be the coldest game in the NFL history. Weather is not the only difference. People are back from injury, people are injured that were not in September. It is a completely different game. 

Colin Kaepernick is a player whom currently has ownership over Green Bay. The numbers are silly in the last two games when he faced Green Bay plus he is coming on strong as of late with the addition of Michael Crabtree. Kaepernick never really dealt with this kind of weather yet in his career, and when he does play in colder weather games, it is inconsistent at best.  Green Bay will need to be better in terms of contain as this has been a problem that burned them in the past with Kaepernick as well as running backs like Frank Gore from bouncing it to the outside. If Green Bay can bottle up Kaepenrick and Gore, it will probably result in a good day for them. 

It is probably assumed Gore will eat on Sunday against a weak Packers defense. Seeing what Matt Forte did means Gore could have a massive day on Sunday. Now he is bothered by a knee injury and one thing I found interesting just looking his logs this year is he strings together three or four big games then he struggles for a couple. This would also be called inconsistency friends as well as grasping for straws with a shitty defense. Gore only had 14 yards albeit against a tough as nails Arizona's defense. I cannot help, but think this is just a wonky statistic thing meaning Gore will likely have over 80 yards of rushing. More importantly is not what Green Bay does against Gore, but the others who will run the football comparable to when you let a basketball star beat you and not his or her teammates. 

As for the other quarterback, it will be the second game back for Aaron Rodgers. He did not play well in his first game back. If we were to do a Packers Classroom, it was a C performance for Aaron. But this could be a game where he comes up with a big performance. I realize it will be colder than a beautiful girl when I try to talk to her, but hear me out with this out. Matt Ryan had 348 yards against San Francisco's pass defense two weeks ago completing 37 passes with only eleven incompletions. Carson Palmer had 407 yards last week and nobody is panicking about how San Francisco will stop Rodgers?  Even with the cold, no one should be shocked if Rodgers comes up with a big day on Sunday. 

While it seems like passing through heavy winds might not be the best idea, it could be the only one. Green Bay is running the ball well, but San Francisco's rush defense will lock most teams down. They need to have some creativity with their running game. The short side toss did not work against Chicago and it will certainly most not work against a fast San Francisco defense. Now do I believe the sweep will work because San Francisco's defense is very aggressive meaning they can get caught up in something like a sweep play yet it needs to be with the field. Please I cannot take many more short-side tosses in my life because I am pretty sure I will jump directly out of my window. 

Before I make my pick, let me address a couple things... I hate to sound like a Packers elitist, but here we go. Everyone needs to stop bitching about Troy Aikman and Joe Buck. They do not hate your team, I promise. Look I love Cris Collinsworth, but does he sometimes say things I disagree with? Absolutely. Announcers are not always accurate just like we in life are not always accurate at our jobs. Seeing this petition against Aikman is embarrassing to Packers fans. It is up there with 'Best Fans in Baseball' type bullshit we see from St. Louis.  Also embarrassing was Packer fans getting on Tyler Dunne of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel for taking San Francisco over Green Bay... HOW DARE THE PACKER BEAT WRITER PICK AGAINST THE TEAM... U ARE NOT DOING YOUR JOB, TELL ME NICE THINGS, NOT BAD THINGS.  

Well I am going to disagree with Dunne. It is probably because I am a homer but I also truly believe Green Bay can win this game. They will need to force a couple turnovers as well as play close to mistake-free football as possible. Rodgers always shows up for San Francisco, and that will happen on Sunday plus Eddie Lacy has one of the best days on the ground against San Fran's defense. Green Bay's defense holds Kaepernick in check while Gore has a big day. This is another nail-biter but Packers pull it out. 

Green Bay 28 San Francisco 23 

Charlie.