Brady now NFL's No. 1 QB

ShareThis

Move over Peyton. Brady's the man now. The debate's over. Simplistic? No doubt. Also true. And it's more than the fact that Tom Brady broke Peyton Manning's record for the most touchdowns thrown in a regular season this year, or that he's been named the MVP. It's that he's become the better quarterback. In the high-rent district where NFL quarterbacks live, in a world where the national perception has been that Manning is No. 1 and Brady is 1A, Brady now lives in the penthouse all by himself. Last weekend was simply the exclamation point. Saturday night we had Brady going 26-for-28 in a win over Jacksonville. Can you play quarterback any better than Brady did Saturday night? How can you? He is so good that we've come to expect it. Somehow, some way, he is going to find a way to win, right? Saturday night was just the latest in a long list. Sunday we had Manning, his Colts trailing by four in the closing minutes. We had Manning and the Colts with two opportunities to save their season and coming up with nothing both times, the kind of situations in which we've seen Brady come through in so many times. Hasn't this always been the one knock on Manning, the littler asterisk that's always followed him around, the sense that for all the records and all the numbers, he was something less than Superman when it really counted? Wasn't that the little monkey he knocked off his back last year when he finally won a Super Bowl? Well, Sunday the little monkey was right there on his back again, like some old nemesis that came back for a return visit. And that's the difference. Which is not meant to demean Manning, a future Hall of Famer. Take away the Patriots, and there's not a team in the NFL who wouldn't want him under center, wouldn't want him being the signature face of their franchise. He's just not Brady. No one is. That's something we've known around here for a few years now. It's been different with the national media, the national perception. Then again, the national media always are a little late to the dance. They certainly have been in the Manning-Brady debate. Maybe it was the amazing numbers Manning always put up. Maybe it was the perception that Brady was the beneficiary of both the Patriots' system and their great success. Whatever the reason, there was the sense nationally that Manning was more talented. Part of that, certainly, is that Manning was anointed long before he ever got to the NFL, thanks to his bloodlines and the amount of attention he got in college at Tennessee. He had the size, he had the big gun for an arm, he was the No. 1 pick in the '98 NFL Draft, and the future always was going to be bright. But there always was that little asterisk that came with the story, the one that said Manning couldn't win the big one, the reminder that the NFL is real life, not just some wonderful script. We've seen that here with Manning, in his troubles with the Patriots in Gillette Stadium, particularly in the playoff game here in 2005. Remember that day in the snow and the cold? Remember how he spent the entire game with his hands in his pockets, complete with the bad body language, the frustration all but stamped on his face, like some petulant teenager who had just been told he couldn't have the car for the night? Remember when he spent that game continually shaking his head at the indignity of it all, my kingdom for the warmth of the RCA Dome? That's the image that still haunts Manning, the sense that for all his numbers and all his achievements, there's an Achilles heel too, even if that's not always fair. Football is the ultimate ensemble sport. A quarterback, no matter how good as he is, is not alone on an island. He needs great players around him, great coaches. Still, we measure them in results, not in how many TV commercials they have. Ultimately, we measure them in how well their teams do, however unfair that might be, too. So for a while there it was Manning versus Brady, the great stats versus the titles, the great sports debate, Chamberlain-Russell in cleats. We all know Brady's story around here all too well, the sixth-round pick who had to prove it every step of the way, the guy who has sneaked up on the football world step by step, to the point that the national perception always seemed to be a step behind, even with the three Super Bowl titles. Remember when the knock on him was he wasn't great at throwing deep? That started changing a couple of years ago as his celebrity grew, the growing school of thought that Brady no longer was just an extremely efficient quarterback who was a superb manager of the Patriots' offensive system, but truly great in is own right. This year erased any lingering doubt, a year in which he's arguably played the position better than anyone has. All this is all playing out right before our eyes. Manning's season is over, and Brady is one game away from his fourth trip to the Super Bowl in seven years. Manning once again failed to do what we've come to expect great quarterbacks to do, and Brady is the leader of what is one of the all-time great offenses in football history. So move over Peyton. Brady's the man. The debate's over. (Contact Bill Reynolds at breynold@projo.com.)(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)