Brady will never beat Manning in the game of favorites
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COMMENTARY
Deflategate celebrated its one-year anniversary on Monday, a veritable eon in terms of manufactured crusades. But yet, here we are, still debating the veracity of PSI in pigskin and awaiting Round 2 (or is it 25?) in the NFL vs. Tom Brady, coming to a court room near you this March.
Meanwhile, it’s been less than a month since the New England Patriots quarterback’s colleague, Denver Broncos general Peyton Manning, was among those mentioned in a doping investigation conducted by Al Jazeera, which accused Manning of using human growth hormone, delivered to his home guised under his wife’s name.
Nobody is talking about Manning’s alleged HGH use these days, partly spun by the fact that the aging quarterback more resembles Jim Sorgi than the old Peyton Manning, but also bred from the NFL’s overwhelming edict to protect its most visible spokesperson. CBS play-by-play announcer Jim Nantz, who happens to share the same promotional agent as Manning, still hasn’t even whispered about the controversy through the pair of Bronco games that he’s broadcast since the report went live late last month. ESPN analysts have scoffed at the journalistic integrity of the report’s source, which is rich coming from a network that might as well green light “Agendas’’ to be its latest embrace of debate programming. The NFL hasn’t even retained the services of one Ted Wells, who made the phrase “more probable than not’’ the modern-day equivalent of being guilty with reasonable doubt over the course of his investigation into the Patriots’ alleged use of deflated footballs.
Though it’s certainly a trait possessed by many Patriot fans, paranoia did not create this dichotomy, a favoritism that doesn’t necessarily hide from its intentions. While Brady may be the best quarterback to ever play the game, aiming for his seventh Super Bowl appearance with a win over Manning’s Broncos in Sunday’s AFC Championship game, Manning is the most marketable in the league’s history, a factor that keeps the big box advertisers tossing millions in ad revenue at Roger Goodell’s Park Ave. fortress.
Brady is the handsome, successful twit, married to a supermodel, that the general population was trained to hate, this despite the quarterback’s rags-to-riches story in which Americans tend to revel. Manning is the pre-determined star of genetics, with the sort of real-life “Varsity Blues’’ upbringing that the majority of us rebel against.
And yet, the Brady-Manning rivalry has gone in a different fashion over the years, developing into something where the privileged has become the underdog to the glitz and glamour of a guy that began his career as an afterthought.
The NFL protects one while persecuting the other.
Manning was sidelined when the Patriots and Broncos met last November, so Sunday will be the first time Brady and Manning face off against each other since Nov. 2, 2014. That day resulted in a 43-21 win for the Patriots, which gave Brady wins in four of the last five meetings against his Broncos counterpart. The lone loss in that stretch, of course, was in the AFC title game two years ago, a game in which Brady had Julian Edelman, Austin Collie, and Aaron Dobson as his most integral targets. The fact that he was able to throw for 277 yards may have been the most unlikely outcome of New England’s 26-16 loss.
On Saturday, Brady got his band back together for the first time in two months, utilizing Edelman and Rob Gronkowski to the fullest in the Patriots’ divisional playoff win over the Kansas City Chiefs. Brady threw for 302 yards and two scores, while rushing for a third, as New England showed off a threatening dynamic that it hadn’t displayed in weeks,
The next day, Manning led his team to a handful of field goals before a costly turnover in the fourth quarter led to the Broncos’ comeback win over the Pittsburgh Steelers. The quarterback struggled much of the day with errant passes — the wind, according to the pandering Nantz and Phil Simms — and finished 21-of-37 for 222 yards and a 74.4 passer rating. Brady’s rating on Saturday was 103.5.
Brady clearly outplayed Manning on the first game of their respective playoff stages.
That is, unless you ask the Peyton Protection Machine, in this case, Bill Belichick’s favorite NFL analyst, Charlie Casserly.
“After review of tape #Broncos Manning outplayed #Patriots Brady,’’ Casserly Tweeted Monday morning. “He was more accurate. He had 9 drops by his receivers.’’
Of course, Casserly makes no mention of the rust Edelman showed in his first action in two months with four drops of his own in the first half Saturday.
Admittedly, there is a certain amount of knee-jerk expectation on the part of Patriot fans, who tend to live their football lives in a glass house of eternal guard that makes it hard to see through the tinted lenses. Then Deflategate came along and blew every theory you had about New Englanders being too overly suspicious of the NFL in general right out of the general sense of logic.
The NFL and CBS are no doubt reveling in another Manning-Brady battle for what it means for ratings and the legacy of both particulars. And despite what Patriot fans might think, there are no rooting interests at stake.
Favorites? That’s a different matter entirely.
It’s the one contest in which Brady will never beat Manning.
Contact Eric Wilbur at: [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter: @GlobeEricWilbur and Facebook www.facebook.com/GlobeEricWilbur
Memorable images from the old Boston Garden
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