A deeper look at Brady vs. Manning
Thursday, November 25, 2010
At the end of every turf war between the Colts and Patriots, we inevitably stray the course in our lame attempt at post-game analysis and eventually digress into a pissing match regarding which team has the better quarterback. The never-ending Tom Brady vs. Peyton Manning debate is football’s version of “Great Taste … Less Filling!” in that there’s really no wrong answer unless your repetitive barking coerces you into believing your own twisted logic.
Granted, my timing might seem a bit awry, but I figure this a good day to try my hand at dissecting this classic argument because a.) today’s game against the Lions figures to be such a snooze-fest that it’s not worth previewing and b.) because Manning vs. Brady is as timeless as falling asleep on the couch after Thanksgiving dinner.
I have two problems with the overall foundation of this argument. The first is the use of playoff records to compare the two quarterbacks. This is as futile as relying solely on a pitchers’ win-loss record to determine who should win Major League Baseball’s Cy Young Award.
We readily admit that a pitcher’s worth extends far beyond the number of games he wins – which is why Felix Hernandez won this year’s Cy Young despite his 13-12 record – yet we conversely rely heavily on Brady’s 14-4 playoff record in comparison to Manning’s average postseason resume (9-9) to push him over the top despite the fact a quarterback is as dependent on his defense as a pitcher is on his offense.
When analyzing Hernandez’s 2010 season or comparing Brady and Manning’s playoff records, you need to dig a little deeper. The irony is that Hernandez winning the Cy Young has been universally considered a victory for non-traditional statistics, yet most of the numbers used to make this argument, such as earned-run average, strikeouts and run support, are actually far from unorthodox. And I’m willing to bet the writers who voted for Hernandez didn’t analyze each of his 12 losses to see how many were truly a result of lousy run support. They probably just took the numbers at face value, much like we do when measuring Brady and Manning’s playoff resumes.
The reality is while Brady is 14-4 lifetime in the postseason, he’s just 5-4 in his last nine playoff games dating back to 2005, which is right around the time New England’s defense went from being dominant (ranked No. 2 in the league in 2004) to mediocre (17th overall in ’05). Conversely, Manning accumulated a 3-6 playoff record from 1999 to 2005, but is 6-3 in his last nine postseason games dating back to 2006, which means in the past four years he’s been slightly better than Brady in what are typically defined as “big games” – the games often referenced by the pro-Brady crowd as the crux of their argument.
Brady started his postseason career with nine consecutive playoff wins during seasons in which the Patriots ranked 6th, 1st and 2nd in points per game allowed, whereas Manning’s defenses during his first nine playoff games ranked as low as 20th in the league in points allowed and as high as 2nd overall.
As you can see, the numbers aren’t completely definitive, but to suggest Brady excelled in the postseason when he played alongside a great defense wouldn’t be a stretch, nor would it be a stretch to suggest that the Patriots haven’t been nearly as dominant defensively over the past five seasons, which coincidences with Brady’s recent playoff struggles. And during the same aforementioned stretch, the Colts have clearly closed the gap defensively in the talent pool, specifically in 2006 when safety Bob Sanders returned from a knee injury just in time to help lead Indianapolis to four consecutive playoff wins en route to a Super Bowl title. With Sanders back in the lineup, the Colts finished the postseason with the second best run defense.
The larger point is both quarterbacks have excelled in the postseason when they’ve had great defenses behind them, and Brady has had a distinct advantage in that category through the years – fact, not opinion – which does more to explain his superior playoff record than imaginary intangibles such as “heart” or “spunk.”
I actually regret wasting this much time on a small sample size such as postseason football, because by doing so I’ve become what I hate the most – a nitwit who defines a player’s legacy based on only a handful of games instead of measuring a much larger body of work. This segues nicely into my second pet peeve, which is the loose translation of what defines a “big game” in the NFL. Typically, we reserve such adjectives for playoff games, yet whenever Manning throws a costly interception against the Patriots during the regular season – as he did this past Sunday – we immediately resuscitate the theory that Manning always gags in critical spots.
Judging by this logic – and it’s logic used routinely by New England fans, not something I’ve pulled out of thin air – that would mean every game between the Patriots and Colts qualifies as a “big game,” in which case Manning has fared particularly well in recent years since he had won five of his last six against New England before Sunday’s loss at Gillette Stadium.
You can’t have it both ways. Either we admit Manning isn’t as bad in big games as we’ve trained our minds to believe, or we extend our definition of “big games” to include more than games in which Manning screws up. Our emphasis on these particular games is what fuels the unwarranted extremism often used when comparing the two quarterbacks, such as the idea that Brady “always comes through” in the clutch – a bogus statement when you consider he’s had three three-interception games in his last six playoff starts.
I guess if I had to choose sides in this argument, I’d choose Manning because he’s done more with less. Even if you remove the season in which Brady blew out his knee, Manning has only won five fewer regular-season games than Brady has since 2001 despite not having nearly half as much talent defensively. And he won a Super Bowl with a defense ranked 26th in the league – something Brady has never done, but something he’ll have to do if he wants to win a fourth ring this year. Manning has also been vastly superior in every important statistical category during their peak head-to-head years (2001 to present), and now he’s a Super Bowl champion, too, which eliminates the one intangible edge Brady always had.
As I said earlier, you can’t go wrong with either quarterback. There are no losers in this debate, except for those who distort reality to make their point instead of sticking with the facts.
Related Articles
- Mangini’s Browns Embarrass Belichick’s Patriots
- No one bounces back quite like the Patriots
- Patriots thankful for Chargers’ stupidity
- Patriots’ defense delivers rare knockout blow
- Patriots’ struggles can be linked to poor decision-making
- Brady, Patriots Dominate Steelers 39-26
- Colts, Patriots a victim of past success
Follow us on Pinterest Google + Facebook Twitter See It Read It