The great debate: Brady or Manning?

(Eddie Keogh / Globe Staff)
Who's the best quarterback in the NFL? The Globe's Christopher L. Gasper and Tony Massarotti debate whether it's Tom Brady of the Patriots or Peyton Manning of the Colts.

Brady is the MVQB

By Christopher L. Gasper
Globe Staff / November 13, 2009

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If you're strictly a numbers guy, then the Tom Brady-Peyton Manning debate is black and white in favor of Manning and his 48,173 yards and 349 touchdown passes. But if you can appreciate that greatness can't be measured solely in statistics, that it is a nebulous quality that surfaces in crucial moments and on clutch plays, then Brady has to be your guy.

Manning might be the Most Valuable Passer, but Brady is the Most Valuable Player between the two.

Brady's greatness can't be measured by how many times he has thrown for six points. It's defined by a sixth sense.

"That’s what makes Tom Brady, Tom Brady," said Patriots coach Bill Belichick. "That’s what makes Randy Moss, Randy Moss. That’s what made Lawrence Taylor, Lawrence Taylor. They just have that sixth, seventh sense."

Brady does have numbers -- and they're the most important ones of all at the quarterback position. Including the playoffs, he has as 107-29 record as a starting quarterback, a .787 winning percentage. No other quarterback has led his team to a 16-0 regular-season. Brady has played in four Super Bowls, winning three and twice been named Super Bowl MVP.

You want more numbers? Here are five reasons that Brady is a better quarterback than Manning:

1. He finds a way to win. Of all the memorable passes Brady has had in his career, no play defined his will to win more than an 11-yard rush against the Chicago Bears in 2006. Brady always jokes that coming back this season from reconstructive knee surgery has caused him to go from slow to slower; even pre-knee surgery, he would never be confused with Steve Young. With his team tied, 10-10, in the fourth quarter, Brady faced a third and 9 from the Chicago 25. He dropped back to pass and found nobody open, so he took off down the middle of the field. Monstrous Bears middle linebacker Brian Urlacher closed on Brady quickly. Brady wasn't going to get the first down and he was going to get buried by Urlacher. But then he didn't. Brady somehow juked Urlacher and picked up the first down. Five plays later he hit Benjamin Watson for what turned out to be the winning touchdown. When's the last time Manning did that?

2. No quarterback is cooler under pressure. Somewhere John Madden is still saying the Patriots should just take a knee and play for overtime in Super Bowl XXXVI. That was the first time, but definitely not the last, we learned Brady thrives under pressure. There are game-winning drives and then there are game-winning drives. While Manning, who has a 7-8 record in the postseason, has had some of his biggest flops in the playoffs, twice Brady, who owns a 14-3 playoff record, has marched his team down the field in a tie game to set up the game-winning field goal in the Super Bowl. Like Michael Jordan taking a game-winning shot or Tiger Woods with a critical putt, Brady has reached the point where it's newsworthy when he doesn't succeed with the game hanging in the balance.

3. He beat Manning at his own game. Manning hasn't yet proved he is the pure winner Brady is, but Brady proved in 2007 he can be the pure passer Manning is. Manning had the benefit of beginning his career with Marvin Harrison. The two are the most prolific quarterback-wide receiver tandem in NFL history with 112 touchdown connections over 11 seasons. The active leading tandem is Manning and Reggie Wayne (57). Brady didn't have weapons of such quality until 2007, when the Patriots got Randy Moss and Wes Welker. Given Manning-esque weaponry, Brady surpassed Manning's 2004 season. That year, Manning tossed a then-NFL record 49 touchdown passes (against 10 interceptions), threw for 4,557 yards and completed 67.6 percent of his passes. In 2007, Brady threw 50 touchdown passes (against eight interceptions), passed for 4,806 yards, and completed 68.9 percent of his passes to win the league's MVP.

4. He is the better leader. Manning is one of the most gentlemanly players in the league, but he has made publicly critical comments about teammates and coaches in frustration situations, whereas Brady is never one to point the finger elsewhere. In 2006, after the Colts lost to the Pittsburgh Steelers in the playoffs and Manning was sacked five times, he said he wanted to be a good teammate but that there had been protection problems. This offseason, Manning was unhappy with the departure of offensive coordinator Tom Moore and offensive line coach Howard Mudd due in part to NFL pension issues and said that he wasn't "sure everybody is on the same page" and that he was just trying to "focus on playing quarterback well." As poorly as wide receiver Joey Galloway played this season before being released, Brady never publically criticized him to the media. The only time he showed frustration was on the sidelines.

5. He is an all-weather quarterback. Manning has had the distinct advantage of playing more than half of his career games inside a climate-controlled stadium, a career conducive to passing. Since his rookie season of 1998, Manning has played 99 games indoors, the most of any player in the NFL, according to Stats Inc. Brady, who entered the league in 2000, has played in 10 games indoors. Manning turns cold when the weather does. In eight games below 40 degrees, he has a 58.9 percent completion percentage, 9 TDs, 8 interceptions and a 78.3 QB rating. In 23 games below 40 degrees, Brady has completed 63.9 percent of his passes, tossed 39 TDs and 15 interceptions and has a 95.9 QB rating, including a six-TD pass performance against Tennessee in the snow this season.

You certainly can't go wrong with either quarterback. But I'll take Brady.

Manning is the man

By Tony Massarotti
Globe Staff / November 13, 2009

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In a place like Massachusetts, where fairness and liberal thinking are embraced, Peyton Manning must be defended. Even now. Even on the eve of the biggest football game of the year.

In the considerable and extraordinary history of Boston sports, we have had this kind of debate before, of course. Williams or DiMaggio? Munson or Fisk? Larry or Magic? And so now we are the midst of perhaps the consummate either/or, a debate involving two of the greatest quarterbacks in league history, a question to which there is truly no wrong answer.

Brady or Manning?

Here are five reasons Manning is better:

1. He is the greatest passer of all time. Presumably, when all is said and done, Manning will own every major passing record in NFL history. In many ways, one cannot help but wonder if he were genetically engineered to play the position. Manning has Brett Favre’s durability, Dan Marino’s arm and Joe Montana’s smarts. Among all quarterbacks in league history to have started as many games as Manning, nobody has a higher passer rating.

"He’s real good. He’s obviously a very skilled player and he has a good scheme,’’ Patriots coach Bill Belichick said of Manning this week. ``They have a good system they’ve been running for a long time, they have a lot of good players to run it with. On top of that, I know he prepares very hard. Things that you’ve shown, he’ll be ready for. Looks that are different, he sorts them out pretty quickly [and] can figure out what you’re doing.’’

2. He’s built to last. The best stat that Manning doesn’t get enough credit for? Since being selected with the first overall pick of the 1998 draft, he has started every game played by the Colts. As much as that is a testament to his size (6 feet 5 inches, 230 pounds), it is also a testament to Manning’s ability to get rid of the ball. In his last 104 regular season games, he has been sacked precisely 104 times.

"He gets rid of the ball. He throws it away,’’ Belichick said when asked why Manning is so hard to sack. "The only way to sack him is for somebody to come that he doesn’t expect – the guy’s blocked and he beats a block and Peyton’s not thinking about him or for some reason he just doesn’t see him. If he sees him coming, he’ll get rid of the ball.’’

3. He rarely has been supported by a great defense. With regard to Brady, in particular, the greatest argument against Manning is the following: in the postseason, Brady is 14-3 and Manning is 7-8. In fact, much of this argument stems from the players' three head-to-head meetings in playoffs, two in AFC Championship games. Brady and the Pats knocked the Colts out of the playoffs in 2004 and 2005, while the Colts beat New England in the 2007 AFC Championship Game.

During those three seasons, the Patriots defense finished the season ranked a respective first, second and second in the NFL in scoring defense. The Colts ranked 20th, 19th and 23d. After New England won the first two games by scores of 24-14 and 20-3, they arrived in Indianapolis with a beat-up defense for the 2007 AFC title game and got shredded in the second half of an eventual 38-34 loss. That game was no more Brady’s fault than the first two were Manning’s.

4. He doesn’t have Bill Belichick. In assessing a quarterback’s development, is there a more important factor than his coach? During Brady’s first three full seasons as a starter, his passer ratings were 86.5, 85.7 and 85.9, numbers that today would put him on the level of someone like Eli Manning. The Patriots generally ran a conservative offense and Brady wasn’t particularly skilled at throwing the deep ball. Belichick truly nurtured him.

The son of former NFL quarterback Archie Manning, Peyton learned to play the position from his father and was a prodigy. How good might he have become if he had Belichick as his first coach rather than Jim Mora? How many titles might he have won? Players like Montana and Brady benefited greatly from landing with a genius coach. Manning never really had that luxury.

5. He wins anyway. Entering this weekend, in 184 career regular season starts, Manning-led teams are 125-59, a winning percentage of .679 that translates into an average season of 11-5. During his career, the Colts have been the playoffs nine times. Since the start of the 2003 season, Manning and the Colts are 83-21. The Colts, currently 8-0, have not finished any of the last six full seasons with anything worse than a 12-4 record.

While the Colts have won just one Super Bowl during that span -- again, this is the most common argument against Manning -- two Indianapolis seasons ended in Foxboro, where the Pats are 8-0 in the postseason during the Belichick-Brady era. Nobody beats the Pats in Foxboro during the playoffs, which means that the home team has won all three playoff meetings between these teams during this decade. This weekend, that same home-field advantage could very well be at stake.

Vote: Who's better?