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  • OT - Manning critics silent "for now"

    Notice how you can change the name to "McNabb" and most of the article wouldn't need to change.

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    Manning Quiets Critics--For Now
    By Vito Forlenza, Comcast.net Sports Editor
    January 25, 2007

    Sure, now everyone hails Peyton Manning. Praising him is easy this week. After orchestrating the greatest comeback in conference championship game history, the much-maligned Manning has suddenly changed everyone's opinion of his talents.

    Where are the critics? Where are the detractors? Where are all the nonbelievers who called him a loser, a fruitless leader, a folding chair in the face of adversity?

    Don't worry. They're not hiding far from the surface. Manning knows it. He's lived with them for too long to know they don't magically vanish. So forgive him if he's a little cautious to open up during Super Bowl week.

    Because when it comes to Peyton Manning, the public has always shied away from fully embracing him as the face of the most popular sport in America.

    He knows the public's view of him turned 180 degrees in just 60 football minutes. All it took was an improbable 38-34 AFC title game victory over New England. He also understands that it can turn back just as fast if the next 60 fail to turn him into a champion. All it'll take is a few picks and a sluggish loss to Chicago.

    Admittedly, it's just as fun for me to taunt Manning's critics. Probably because we've shared some of the same ones in recent years. I picked the Colts this August to win the Super Bowl--because of him. And the August before that. And the one before that. It became a habit to stick with the league's greatest talent.

    Each time, people would blurt out the same response: "Are you nuts? Manning can't win the big one!"

    Ah, but he did win a big one. In fantastic fashion...rallying the Colts from an 18-point deficit...capping the comeback with an 80-yard drive in the final 2:17...finally upending his nemeses in three-time Super Bowl winners Tom Brady and Bill Belichick.

    It was the perfect stage for Manning to engineer his breakthrough. Even if he says he doesn't view it as redemption.

    "I just don't get into that. I don't play that card," said Manning, who was 3-6 in the playoffs entering this postseason. "I don't get into monkeys and vindication. I know how hard I've worked this year. I know how hard I've worked this week. It's always nice when you can take the hard work, put it to use, and come away with a win."

    Throughout his 13 years since leaving the Louisiana high school fields with nearly every passing record imaginable--from his freshman year with the Volunteers through this ninth season with the Colts--one truth has surfaced to define Peyton Manning.

    It's not that he can't win the big one; it's that the masses can't identify with him.

    The reality is that most observers knock Manning because his story is one few can appreciate. The son of an NFL star and collegiate legend, Peyton never struggled outside of football. He never had to overcome environmental obstacles, never had to walk 10 miles to grassless, rock-soaked practice fields, never had to toil in part-time jobs in high school to help feed his younger siblings.

    We like stories like that, tales of those who surmounted insurmountable odds.

    Instead, the perception of Manning is that he lived a privileged life where everything was all about football. His father taught him arm angles, release points, and footwork. He was breaking down film and learning the nuances of blitz packages at a time when most kids were just trying to find a way to stop Bo Jackson in Tecmo Bowl.

    That's not a story we want to cheer. No one roots for the kid who was born with a gift and then had the means to sharpen it to perfection ever since.

    The consequences? The prodigy fails to live up to ridiculously high expectations and pundits criticize. Until now, the only area where they had room to maneuver was through Manning's shortcomings in big games. He's done everything else so well--he's set records, won two MVPs, won big during the regular season, and lived as a model citizen off the field.

    So, his history was retraced and almost everyone took largely uneducated cracks at his lack of a championship on any level.

    Suddenly, his inability to win a state title in high school became a national issue. Perhaps people are slow to acknowledge that millions of kids have won state championships and never made it to Division I college football, never mind the NFL.

    The argument that he never beat Tennessee's chief rival, Florida, was cited as hard evidence that he always choked in big games. Somehow, the critics forget that he was going up against the height of the Steve Spurrier era--the Gators weren't only beating Tennessee, they were also crushing just about everyone else, winning one national championship and playing for another during that period.

    Even so, Tennessee won the Southeastern Conference championship in Manning's senior season. He was magnificent during the league title game, taking home MVP honors after throwing for 373 yards, four scores, and rallying Tennessee back from a 13-point deficit in a 30-29 win over Auburn.

    He delivered the performance everyone wanted, the one everyone had been waiting for. Immediately, he was a touted as a gamer.

    Sound familiar?

    With the national championship at stake a few weeks later, the Vols were whipped by Nebraska in the Orange Bowl, the Cornhuskers shared the crown with Michigan, and the loser label was again pasted over the nameplate on Manning's jersey.

    The same thing will happen again if Indianapolis loses the Super Bowl. The demons he was said to have exorcised against the Patriots will come back to life. All the negativity he quelled will resurface. Hecklers will take newfound pleasure in knocking the man who has everything but a ring.

    How quickly they'll forget about the magic he performed against the Patriots.

    "I just think it's great for Peyton to get to a Super Bowl with a drive like that," Colts coach Tony Dungy said of Indy's game-winning march. "It probably won't shut anybody up until we win one. It'll still be, 'Why can't you win the Super Bowl?'

    "But Peyton Manning is a great player, and anybody who doesn't know that doesn't know football."

    For now, most cynics have surrendered. But they'll be back. Even if he does win the Super Bowl, they'll find something else to chew on, another flaw to expose.

    That's how it's always been with Peyton Manning. Some just can't appreciate greatness when it's right in front of them. Others simply choose not to. I pity those people.
    "Philly fans are great....It's the only place where you pull up on the bus and you've got the grandfather, the grandmother, the kids and the grandkids - everybody flicking you off. At other stadiums, they give you the thumbs-down. Here, they give you the middle finger.”
    — Michael Strahan

    "No one likes us, no one likes us, no one likes us, we don’t care, we’re from Philly, F—-ing Philly, No one likes us, we don’t care!”
    - Jason Kelce with the best championship speech ever

  • #2
    Is this guys real name Archie Manning?

    That has to be the biggest load of shit that I've ever read in my life. This guy picks the Colts for 20 years straight and finally gets one right. So he decides that even though he got it wrong for 19 years he will talk smack about the one time he gets it right?

    Sorry to tell you Vito but Manning played like crap in quite a few of the playoff loses you excuse him from.
    FRESH > cancer

    I hate everything the Cowboys stand for. If you think they are America's team, then you support everything that is wrong with America. The excess, the greed, the lack of maturity, the lack of responsibility, the lack of control. - Luzinski's Gut

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    • #3
      Unfortunately, McNabb already went to a SB and still gets hammered regularly...

      Peyton better hope his team wins it because if not he is going to be right back on the treadmill...
      Eliminate distractions, create energy, fear nothing, and attack everything.

      -Andy Reid

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      • #4
        I'll add, with Grossman still playing like crap, Manning will look really, really bad if they lose.
        "Philly fans are great....It's the only place where you pull up on the bus and you've got the grandfather, the grandmother, the kids and the grandkids - everybody flicking you off. At other stadiums, they give you the thumbs-down. Here, they give you the middle finger.”
        — Michael Strahan

        "No one likes us, no one likes us, no one likes us, we don’t care, we’re from Philly, F—-ing Philly, No one likes us, we don’t care!”
        - Jason Kelce with the best championship speech ever

        Comment


        • #5
          Will Manning look really bad if they lose 31-28 and he throws 4 TDs and no picks? This isn't Manning vs. Grossman. It's the Bears vs. the Colts.

          I cannot be convinced that the QB position is overrated in terms of the importance of having a superstar there to win a title. And that the QB has MUCH less of an effect on a game than a goalie or a pitcher.
          "Luck is the residue of design"
          -Branch Rickey

          Comment


          • #6
            tho those who are "hammered" are in the limelight and subject to public scrutiny, I've always had more respect for them then those that hammer. I try to stay away from real life hammerers. They seem unfullfilled and like to get attention being critical of famous people.
            Sonny J

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