Considering the Colts won the Super Bowl 29-17 and Peyton Manning unloaded the gorilla by winning the MVP, I thought it would be cool to reset some of things I recently wrote about Peyton and the Colts.
On January 17th, prior to the conference championship games, I asked the question: what would winning the Super Bowl mean for each of the remaining quarterbacks? Here’s what I had to say about Peyton Manning:
There is no player in the NFL that would benefit more from winning the Super Bowl than Peyton Manning. Winning the Super Bowl would absolutely validate all his regular season accomplishments and gaudy statistics. No longer could his entire body of work be marred by the trepidation of never having won in the clutch. In fact, how well or poorly Manning plays is wholly insignificant ironically. Should Manning continue his playoff awfulness (1TD/5INT in 2 games) and finish with 2 TDs and 10 INTs, it would be completely ignored. All that matters is that Peyton gets the ring. The proverbial monkey will have been lifted from his back, and all doubters will have been quieted.
I would have to say that the description about Peyton’s legacy is pretty spot-on now that he’s won the Super Bowl – and was MVP to boot.
Here’s the prediction I gave on my weekly Doc Brown’s Sports Almanac Picks over at NBX on Friday:
There is a vision…Super Bowl Sunday…and there is a very special man proudly hoisting the Lombardi Trophy for all to see and that man my friends, is Peyton Manning. Yes I realize the Colts are favored by a TD. But folks, they’re favored because they’re simply better. The Colts are MUCH better than the Bears, just like the AFC is much better than the NFC. There is nothing about the Bears that truly impresses me. This one will be in Miami, and that’s why I’m going with an Indianapolis blowout.
Man, my arm’s going to be tired from patting myself on the back. Plus, props to my dad who called Indy winning the Super Bowl prior to their win over Baltimore. As he explained to me, everything set up perfectly for the Colts last year (home field throughout, great regular season) and they lost. This year their road would be much more difficult since they stumbled down the stretch of the regular season forcing them to win on the road against the league’s best defense (Baltimore), and then beat New England. He was right; on the surface nothing set up nicely for the Colts, but in the end, it was immaterial as the Colts persevered.
