Peyton still paid to make a big play
Peyton Manning is a better quarterback than John Elway. Manning just doesn’t have the Super Bowl rings to prove it.
Down to their last, best chance to win a championship together, all Elway wants Manning to do is: Make one big play when it matters most.
“You watch all these playoff games, and there’s a play made by a quarterback in every game that helps a team win those games,” Elway said Thursday, rapping his knuckles on a desk for emphasis.
“There’s a big play in every game that a quarterback has to make when you get to playoff football that really kind of makes the difference.”
When a championship run ended with a playoff clunker for the third time
in three seasons with a loss to Indianapolis, Elway bemoaned the Broncos’ lack of fire. Elway demanded more kicking and screaming from his team. He was talking to Manning as much as anybody in the Denver locker room. Age had diminished Manning’s skills, and the point was re-enforced with a $4 million pay cut.
Elway, however, also understands what a drag it is for a quarterback to grow old. He lived it.
“It is hard. And it is hard, the older you get,” Elway said, recalling his struggle to deal with fading skills late in his playing career. “And it is harder … all of a sudden to make that adjustment and start relying on other people, when you’ve relied on yourself for so long to be that guy who’s going to pull the trigger and be that guy in big games that has to pull it out. There is a transition to that. And it is tough.”
Elway is lauded as clutch. Manning is dissed as a choker.
It has been mentioned a gazillion times that Manning’s record in the playoffs is an unremarkable 12-13. It is forgotten that until his final two seasons, Elway’s record in the playoffs was 7-8.
In five Super Bowl appearances, Elway completed 50 percent of his passes for three touchdowns and eight interceptions, with a quarterback rating of 61.4. In three Super Bowl appearances, Manning has completed 68 percent of his passes for three touchdowns and four interceptions, with a quarterback rating of 81.0.
The bottom line? Even a great quarterback, especially as he gets older, needs help. As Elway said: “When we won those two championships, what was the formula? The formula was to play good defense and really, offensively, it was about running the ball.”
Sound like any current Broncos team you know?
What goes around comes around. Early in his playing career, Elway chafed under the tight reins and conservative offensive philosophy of coach Dan Reeves.
But watch how the Broncos play now, and it strikes me that Denver has adopted the same philosophy with an old Manning as Reeves used with a young Elway: Don’t throw away the game early through mistakes, and give yourself a chance to win it late.
Trailing by a point against Pittsburgh in the fourth quarter on Sunday, the Broncos faced third down, needing 12 yards to move the sticks and keep their comeback hopes alive. Manning responded with a 36-yard pass down the middle to Bennie Fowler. It was the one moment of greatness Denver needed to win the playoff game.
Describing his team’s offensive inconsistency during the 2015 season, I liked it when coach Gary Kubiak said: “Obviously we had a little quarterback thing going on.”
No joke. For a team that won 12 regular-season games, it has not been an easy year for anybody.
Manning was forced to deal with his football mortality. Elway was forced to deal with the fact his big investment in Manning might never net a championship and end in an awkward divorce. Kubiak was forced to deal with keeping the quest for a top seed in the playoffs alive with Brock Osweiler at quarterback, then was forced to tell Osweiler that going 5-2 in seven starts wasn’t good enough to keep his job.
Everybody wants a fairy-tale ending. Nobody wants to talk about all the stuff that sticks to the bottom on your shoes along the way.
It’s a credit to Manning, Elway and Kubiak that nobody let hurt feelings, testosterone or pride get in the way of this last quest for the Super Bowl the three of them will make together. It’s hard to fathom a scenario with Manning playing quarterback for the Broncos next season.
“We are staying in the moment,” Elway said. And I believe him. The championship-or-bust pressure of the past three seasons seems to have been replaced with some last-day-of-school giddiness. That’s a good thing.
Manning ain’t as good as he used to be, and Elway saw it coming. He built this roster and shaped this season around the idea Manning no longer can carry the team to a championship.
Elway is a gambler at heart, but he’s no fool. He won’t make a sucker bet. So the Broncos will not ask Manning to be better than Tom Brady for all 60 minutes of the AFC championship game.
Elway, however, is paying Manning a $15 million salary for one big reason: In every NFL playoff game, there comes a time when the quarterback must make a big play.
That’s the one moment when Manning must stand and deliver.