Peyton Manning is about to play in his third Super Bowl at the conclusion of the greatest season numbers wise that a quarterback has ever had in the NFL.  In the regular season this year, he threw for 5477 and 55 TDs.  He had a completion percentage of 68.3%.  He only threw 10 INTs.  His QB rating was 115.1.  The Broncos scored more points than any team in NFL history with 606.  They were tied with the Seattle Seahawks for the best record in the NFL.

None of those numbers will mean anything if the Broncos lose to the Seahawks in the Super Bowl.  At least that is what the critics will lead you to believe.  Even in Peyton Manning throws for 350 yards with 4 TDs and 0 INTs, if Seattle wins, the critics will say how Peyton Manning can’t win the big game.  He never beat Florida while he was at Tennessee in college.  The 1st season after he graduated, Tee Martin led Tennessee to the BCS title.  While Peyton Manning was putting up prolific numbers in Indianapolis, he couldn’t beat the New England Patriots and Tom Brady.  Tom Brady and the greatest head coach in NFL history, Bill Belichick would go on to win 3 Super Bowls (so far) and play in 5 of them (so far.)  In January of 2007, Peyton Manning led the Colts to a huge comeback to defeat the Patriots and make it to Super Bowl XLI which he then won against the Chicago Bears.  The critics had to change the narrative since he had finally beaten the Patriots and won the Super Bowl.  They could no longer say that he couldn’t win the big games.  The focus became that it was a losing record against the Patriots.  Then it became that he had too many early losses in the playoffs.  It didn’t matter that the Broncos lost last season in the playoffs because of a brain fart on defense.  The loss fell on Peyton’s shoulders.

It is unfathomable to think of how far Peyton has come since returning from neck surgery.  It is hard to find accurate reports of how many neck surgeries that Peyton had during the 2011 season.  More and more reports kept coming out that he had to have another surgery.  The final count that has been documented is four neck surgeries.  I wouldn’t be surprised to find out after he retires that it was 5 or 6.  Still, FOUR SURGERIES on his neck and not only does he come back to the NFL, but he may be better than ever…at age 37.  The Colts gave up on Peyton after the surgeries and drafted Andrew Luck with the first pick in the 2012 NFL Draft.  No one can fault the Colts for what they did.  A quarterback in his mid 30s trying to return from four neck surgeries?  What are the odds that the return would be successful?  Furthermore, even with the success that Peyton has had since returning, do you pass up on potentially 15 great seasons of Andrew Luck for 2 or 3 more seasons with Peyton Manning?  So Peyton Manning had to cut ties with the only team he had known for 14 seasons and move on to the Denver Broncos.  There was a great article that came out this week chronicling how much hard work went into his comeback and how much doubt he had to overcome.  It really put this past season into a better frame of reference for just how amazing it truly was.

Looking at Peyton Manning’s numbers over his career, he has 64,964 yards (regular season) and 491 TD passes (regular season).  He has a career completion percentage of 65.5% and has only thrown 219 INTs.  He has a 2.24 TD to INT ratio over his career with an awful lot of those INTs coming early in his career.  100 INTs came in his 5 seasons in the NFL.  119 over the last 10 seasons.  He has played 15 seasons in NFL (16 if you count the year he missed with the neck injury and played 0 games.)  His overall record in regular season is 167-73 so if you throw out the 3-13 season from his rookie year when the Colts were awful, more than 100 games above .500.  His career winning percentage is 69.6%.  His career QB rating is 97.2.

In comparison, in 20 seasons in the NFL, Brett Favre had 71,838 yards with 508 TDs and 336 INTs.  His completion percentage was 62% and his career quarterback rating was 86.  So in 5 less seasons, Manning has 117 less INTs.  He’d have to thrown 23.4 INTs a year for the next 5 seasons to match Favre’s performance.  Since his rookie season, Peyton has never thrown more than 23, one year he had exactly 23.  Manning is only 6874 yards behind Favre or less than 2 seasons.  Favre never had more than 4500 yards in a season.  Manning has 5.  Favre is only 17 TDs ahead of Peyton…in 5 more seasons of play.  Peyton has NEVER had a season with less than 26 TD passes.  The highest total that Favre ever had in a season was 39.  Peyton has topped 39 TDs in a season twice.  Favre’s overall record was 186-112 for a winning percentage of 62.4%.  So Peyton won at a much better clip.

Joe Montana won 4 Super Bowls, a slightly higher winning percentage as a starting QB (71.3% to 69.6%) and a lot less INTs (139 to 219) than Peyton in the same amount of seasons.  However, all of Peyton’s other numbers are better than Montana.  Almost 25,000 more yards.  218 more TD passes.  A higher QB rating (97.2 to 92.3).  He was even more successful with his new team than Joe was when the 49ers replaced him with Steve Young.  So if you are just judging on Super Bowl victories, then Joe Montana, Terry Bradshaw and Troy Aikman are better than Peyton.  If you look at all the stats though and Peyton wins over those guys.

The last QB to really compare Peyton with is Tom Brady.  Brady has played 14 seasons so the numbers should be easy to compare since Peyton only has 1 more season (2 really since Brady hardly played as a rookie and missed 15 games in the 2008 season due to injury. )  Brady has 49,149 yards passing with 359 TDs and 134 INTs.  His career QB rating is 95.7.  His win – loss record is 148-43 for a winning percentage of 77.5%.  He has won 3 Super Bowls and lost 2 of them.  So Manning has him beat in TD passes and yards by a mile as well as QB rating.  Brady has him beat in TD to INT ratio (2.68 to 2.24) and crushes him in winning percentage (77.5 to 69.6.)

If Peyton wins the Super Bowl this year and closes the gap to 3-2 in Super Bowl wins, the argument will get really good between the fans of Brady and fans of Peyton as to who is better.  For my tastes, I would prefer Peyton over an entire season but I would pick Brady if I had to play one game for all the marbles.  But if Peyton can lead the Broncos past the number 1 defense in the NFL and defeat the Seattle Seahawks in 2 weeks, not only will there be a repeat of this scene…there might even be a different answer to who is the greatest…