The Great Debate: Peyton Manning vs Tom Brady

Peyton Manning or Tom Brady? The debate has gone on for years.

Cory Puffett

I’ll be honest, after the way the Patriots whooped Peyton Manning’s butt last week I toyed with the idea of not writing this at all. Tom Brady didn’t play a great game, but he played a great third quarter. Peyton Manning didn’t play a great game; in fact, he played a horrid game.

But one game does not define a career; one game does not change who or what a given player is.

Peyton Manning is great. Tom Brady is great. Whether you are a Peyton fan, a Brady fan, or are not crazy about either, both of those statements are absolutely accurate. Yes, I am going to make a case for why I think one is a better quarterback than the other. But I hope it is clear that I mean no disrespect to either player. Both are great in their own right and I would be shocked if either is not a first-ballot Hall of Famer.

Unless you don’t know me and have never read my blog, you know that I am a huge Peyton Manning fan. He is my favorite professional athlete. So I’ll understand if you consider my forthcoming argument to be biased. For many years, it was.

But as I have matured (and I’m not done yet) as a football analyst, I have realized that just because I like one more than the other, it does not mean I have to believe that player is better than the other. In this case, however, I truly believe Peyton Manning is a cut above Brady.

But why?

Argument for Tom Brady

Brady fans always make the same argument. He has three Super Bowl rings, five appearances, and has the most career playoff wins of any quarterback in NFL history.

These stats are all well and good, and I’m not going to open a can of worms by bringing up Spygate. Whether that has anything to do with New England’s recent playoff struggles, I don’t think it matters in looking at Tom Brady. These are all team achievements. If anything, I think it is more telling that the Patriots have struggled in the playoffs since their defense regressed from the great units they had in the early 2000s.

Argument for Peyton Manning

Four MVPs.

Ridiculous. How is this an argument? While MVPs are much more telling of an individual player’s achievements than are Super Bowls and win percentages, the MVP award is also very circumstantial. Though Peyton absolutely earned every one of those four awards, there were other quarterbacks that were as, or nearly as, deserving as Peyton in three of those four seasons.

Again, this is not a sound argument.

Comparing Peyton & Tom

Peyton Manning entered the league two seasons before Tom Brady. Brady did not start any games in his rookie season. They have each missed, essentially, a full season (for all intents and purposes, Brady missed the entire 2008 season).

So Manning has 15 seasons under his belt while Brady has 12 (this includes the 11 games each has played this season). Because of this disparity we cannot use career numbers such as total yards, total touchdowns, etc. Instead, we’ll look mostly at per/season statistics.

Yards per Season

Peyton – 4213.9

Tom – 3968.3 (-245.6)

Touchdowns per Season

Peyton – 31.5

Tom – 29.25 (-2.25)

Interceptions per Season

Tom – 10.8

Peyton – 14.4 (+3.6)

Career Completions Percentage

Peyton – 65.4%

Tom – 63.5% (-1.9)

Career Passer Rating

Peyton – 96.7

Tom – 95.9 (-0.8)

Overall, these stats are pretty inconclusive. Though Peyton leads four of the five, his completion percentage and passer rating are not that far ahead. And though Peyton does lead in yards per season by a pretty sizeable margin, Tom has a little better TD/INT radio, at 2.68 to 2.19 for Manning.

So let’s look at the playoffs. Tom Brady has played 24 playoff games, compared to 20 for Peyton Manning. This time, we’ll look at per game stats.

Yards per Game

Peyton – 284.0

Tom – 247.9 (-36.1)

Touchdowns per Game

Tom – 1.75

Peyton – 1.60 (-0.15)

Interceptions per Game

Tom – 0.9

Peyton – 1.1 (+0.2)

Completion Percentage

Peyton – 63.2

Tom – 62.3 (-0.9)

Passer Rating

Peyton – 88.4

Tom – 87.4 (-1.0)

Again, these numbers are fairly inconclusive. However, I will point out that Peyton has a better career passer rating in the playoffs despite throwing for slightly fewer touchdowns and slightly more interceptions per game, which is interesting.

So this all brings me to…

My Pro Manning Arguments

1

You can take or leave what I am about to say. At this point, it truly does become slightly more based in opinion and slightly less based in fact. I’ve explained why I don’t believe that Super Bowls, MVPs, or win percentages can be used as the foundation of an argument over who is the better quarterback.

I’ve also shown that, (a) despite Brady being heralded as the greatest playoff quarterback of all time, Peyton’s numbers are every bit as good, as well as (b) despite Manning being called the greatest regular season quarterback of all time, Brady isn’t all that far off in a lot of categories. In fact, Brady is right on Manning’s tail in other categories I didn’t even mention, such as game-winning drives per season.

My argument is based on mechanics. Starting with pocket awareness and the footwork needed to use that awareness to his advantage. I argue strongly that Peyton Manning is the second best active quarterback in both of these categories. Ben Roethlisberger is the only player who can move around inside the pocket at a higher level than Manning. Peyton always has his feet moving in the pocket, ready to pivot, turn his hips, climb the pocket, side step…anything he needs to do to avoid the rush.

You’ll argue that Manning has had consistently better blocking than Tom Brady is. Though that certainly wasn’t true for the final three years or so of Manning’s time as a starter in Indianapolis, it was absolutely true earlier in his career. But is there a line in football that can give up less than 20 sacks a season every season? Well, even with the poorer lines he had late in his career as a Colt, and the poor line he’s dealt with this season, Peyton has only been sacked about 18 times per season, compared to about 28 times per season for Brady.

Blame the lines all you want, but considering how many fewer drop backs Brady has than Manning each season, I firmly believe pocket presence is the bigger factor here.

2

My next argument has to do with football IQ. Again, this is not a knock on Tom Brady. I just consider Peyton’s to be a little higher. I’ll admit that sometimes it works to Manning’s disadvantage because he tries to do too much. Peyton opened the door for the no-huddle offense to become commonplace in the NFL. Both quarterbacks run it efficiently. But the style that New England runs is much more basic. That’s not to say that basic isn’t effective. It clearly has been in New England. But Manning runs a much more complex style of no-huddle and it’s mind-numbing that he can keep all the calls straight.

When he was in Indianapolis, I heard and read stories on a weekly basis about how Peyton or his receiver would realize that the defense has caught on to one or more of their signals. Manning’s off-the-charts football IQ allowed him to take those signals, and change them to mean something else that would not negatively impact the blocking and other routes on the play. It may not sound hard, but it’s not easy to change something on the fly like that and not have receivers crossing paths or blocking assignments missed.

I’ve never heard of Brady doing anything like this. Coach Belichick is in control of that team. Knowing Belichick’s ego, or lack thereof, if Brady had the ability to do that on the fly the way Peyton does, he wouldn’t stop Brady from doing so.

3

Defenses. Peyton hasn’t had them, Brady has. The Patriots had top 10 defenses for their 2003 and 2004 Super Bowl years, and though their defense wasn’t highly ranked in 2001, they did give up the 6^th fewest points that season.

During Indy’s 2006 Super Bowl season, the defense was ranked 21^st in yards allowed and 23^rd in points allowed. The offensive run game was ranked 18^th in yards. Peyton won despite them.

During New England’s 2007 16-0 season, the defense was ranked 4^th in both yards and points allowed. Brady lost in the Super Bowl despite them.

Now again, these are single games. The Colts stepped up in the playoffs in 2006, and Manning didn’t have a particularly great Super Bowl performance. And New England’s offense as a whole played bad in the 2007 Super Bowl, it wasn’t just Brady. But it may convince some of you that Peyton isn’t the only one who has played poorly in a few important games.

4

My final argument is based on coaching, and it might be my weakest one, which is why I saved it for last.

Bill Belichick will be a first ballot Hall of Famer. Tony Dungy may find himself in Canton one day, but he won’t make it on his first ballot. He was never a great coach. He was a good coach made more popular by his strong faith and work with Fellowship of Christian Athletes.

As for Jim Caldwell, I can’t imagine anybody would disagree when I say Peyton carried him to the Super Bowl.

We all saw what happened to Caldwell when Peyton was unavailable in 2011. I doubt Dungy, a defensive coach who never seemed to put a particularly good unit together, would have done much better.

Bill Belichick managed to win 10 games with Matt Cassel at quarterback in 2008. Let me be clear: I am not saying that Tom Brady is a product of Belichick’s system. I’m just saying that Belichick’s offensive system is built so that quarterbacks of different abilities can succeed and won’t cause the rest of the offense to suffer. But it does make me wonder if Brady would have a .773 regular season winning percentage if Belichick weren’t his coach.

Conclusion

Goes against my prior arguments, but
with recent playoff woes, this may
be a fair solution.

Again, I have a great level of respect for both of these players. Both of them play huge roles in the history of the NFL. Other current quarterbacks like Drew Brees, Aaron Rodgers and Ben Roethlisberger are also very good, maybe as good right now, and may be compared to Manning and Brady one day in terms of career accomplishments.

You look at the great quarterbacks of the past. Dan Marino is considered one of the best despite never winning a Super Bowl. Joe Montana only had a few big-number seasons in his career, and managed not to have his numbers shoot up even once Jerry Rice came to town. John Elway may be the most clutch quarterback of all time.

And of course you have to talk about Johnny Unitas, Bart Starr, Otto Graham and others.

But Manning and Brady will likely go down as the best two to ever play the game. It would be a damn shame if we all do what I used to do, hope one fails so the one I prefer will be remembered as the greatest.

So while I won’t ever be hoping for Brady to fail, I am going to stick to my guns and my sincere belief that Peyton Manning is the better of the two active NFL greats, at least until further notice.