QBs steal show in NFL Playoffs – TD Sports Debate p2
By Dan Salem
Credit: Sam Sharpe-USA TODAY Sports
This NFL Championship round is all about quarterbacks. Todd loves Kaepernick, but when talking Brady and Manning its all about the nicknames. The NFL sports debate is red-hot as Dan Salem and Todd Salem tackle this topic head on in part two of this week’s TD Sports Debate. Two brothers from New York yell, scream and debate sports.
[Part one – Kaepernick or Wilson]
TODD:
I think the NFC quarterback ‘who ya got’ between the San Francisco 49ers’ Colin Kaepernick and the Seattle Seahawks’ Russell Wilson comes down to more than proving people wrong. With your logic you’d take Peyton Manning over Tom Brady as well, which is just idiotic when you consider playoff tangibles like wins and losses and intangibles like rising to the occasion. The fact remains that if a team needs a big play, especially in the playoffs, one of these guys has consistently come up LARGE, and the other hasn’t.
Colin Kaepernick started all 16 games for the 49ers during the regular season. He was, admittedly, average. So what did he do for San Francisco’s first playoff game? He set his season high in rushing yards with 98, which included running for a couple huge first downs. Last year, the difference between Kaep in the regular season and in the playoffs was even more striking.
In that 2012 regular season, his season high in rushing yards was 84 yards in an overtime game. The first game of the playoffs he then went off for 181 and two scores on the ground. So what did he do in rounds two and three to top that? Oh, I don’t know, only throw for his two best yards per attempt averages of the season, including his only 300 yard passing game of the entire year. When he gets to the playoffs, Kaepernick somehow becomes scarier.
Russell Wilson, on the other hand, doesn’t up his game much, if at all. You can say that’s because he’s more consistent during the regular season, but playoff football and winning football require players to give a little more. Besides the Atlanta game last year, where he had to chuck it all over the field because Seattle fell behind 20-0, Wilson has been kind of bad in his other playoff games. You can chalk it up to a small sample size, but there is no getting around that he was atrocious in Seattle’s first playoff game of this season.
I guess Wilson’s pretty lucky to be playing on a team with the best defense (and the best pass defense in the history of statistics!!).
It’s the exact same reason I would take Tom Brady (New England Patriots) over Peyton Manning (Denver Broncos). Manning is great, but he doesn’t get any better in the playoffs. In fact, over the years, he’s been consistently a little worse. Meanwhile, Brady, most often with less weapons, performs better in January.
If the Patriots and Broncos switched quarterbacks, I don’t think this game would be close. Denver would roll.
DAN:
Wow, it’s certainly the flavor of the week to bash Mr. Peyton Manning of the Denver Broncos. I love Russell Wilson for the same reasons you love Tom Brady, although I can’t argue with your statistics. However, when it comes to Peyton Manning you aren’t giving him any credit. Last time I checked he was probably the smartest man to ever play the quarterback position. He took a severely handicapped Indianapolis Colts team to the playoffs year after year after year without the benefit of a hall of fame coach at his side every season, let alone a defense.
I get it, the playoffs are the ultimate goal and Manning’s record is far from stellar. Yet he is near the top when it comes to playoff games played. Sure, you’ll tell me Tom Brady is number one, but so is Bill Belichick in my opinion. You can’t merely swap these two quarterbacks and hand Denver the game in a landslide, that completely removes the head coach from the equation.
Part of your confusion on Manning’s perceived short comings, I think, has everything to do with his nickname, or lack there of. Tom Brady is known as “Tom Terrific.” Rather self-explanatory and easily associated with greatness. If you want to quickly determine who’s better, well Tom is terrific so there’s that.
Peyton Manning on the other hand has no nickname. Skip Bayless calls him the greatest regular season quarterback ever. If that isn’t a backhanded compliment, I don’t know what is. It’s the closest thing I can think of to a nickname for Manning and it sucks. If we knew Peyton as “Manning the Great” or “Peyton the Ultimate Weapon” then perhaps you and everyone else would give more credit where it’s so obviously due.