I see a lot of people picking Brady becaue they say (wrongly I may add) that Brady has done more with less.
I would choose Manning, every time. However, I would pick the Patriots teams over the Colts team everytime.
I'm going to ramble here a bit about some of the things I have come up with when comparing Brady to Manning.
First, Brady has had to play with a defense ranked lower than 5th only twice his entire career. Both times the patriots failed to win more than 10 games. Manning WON the Super Bowl with a 23rd ranked defense.
How many times has tom brady thrown for 290 or more yards in the post season with a 90 or better qb rating in the same game? he did it once (i might tend to grade the tuck game on a curve and bump brady up a notch there....312 and 70 in a blinding snowstorm seems really good). now how many times has manning done that? 6 times. again, i think it's some of your's method of evaluation, far more than manning's post season play, that may need some improvement.
If you look at all of the Patriots playoff games since Brady arrived you would see that they find ways to win games even when brady has an off day, the colts manage to lose even when manning plays well. it happened again last saturday.
Brady had an OK game during his first SB win however, did he really deserve that first super bowl mvp award? He set vinatieiri up for a 48 yard gw fg...but that's hardly a chip shot. Now it's not as tough as the 45 yarder that adam hit to beat oakland in the snowstorm, but shouldn't vinatieiri have been the mvp? or do brady's 145 yards passing and 1 td carry the day there? of course i'd have picked brady over branch for the mvp in the super bowl against the eagles, so that's a wash. (in my books, branch owes vinatieiri a super bowl mvp trophy). but it does illustrate that people will often give too much credit to the qb when a playoff game is won. Hell, it happened in the colts super bowl win. addai and rhodes should have been co-mvp's (although if you force me to chose just one guy, manning's not a bad choice....).
in his 3 games against belichick defenses, joe montana had 3, 3, and 13 points and qb ratings of 34.2, 65.6, and 103. damned if those don't look like manning's numbers of 35.5, 69.3, and 79.1 (especially considering in the 79.1 manning passed for 349 yards and the offense scored 38 points, while in montana's 103 he passed for 190 yards and the offense scored 13 points). was the egg that manning laid in foxborough during their playoff game a failure of manning's or just another example of belichcik's brilliance? certainly it is a bit of both, but given the history here, i'd say it's more about belichick's brilliance. even truly great qb's have struggled against belichick defenses in the playoffs. how hard do we beat up manning for doing so?
would it help to know how manning and the colts have done in the playoffs given the number of points they produce? the colts are 0-3 when they score 14 points or less...... 1-3 when they score 15 to 17 points....0-1 when they score 18 to 21 points....1-1 when they score 22 to 24 points...and 5-0 when they score 29 or more points. Now, would you think that 17 points should be enough to win in the playoffs? you would think so, but not for the colts, who are 1-6 in any playoff game where they score less than 18 points.
now look at how the pats have done: 0-2 when they score 14 or less points....2-0 at 15 to 17....3-0 at 18 to 21.....4-0 at 22 to 24...1-0 at 25 to 28...and 4-1 at 29 or more points. like the colts, the pats have lost all of their playoff games where they score 14 points or less. but the pats are 14-1 in the games where the offense scores 15 or more points. the colts have to get above 28 points to approach that success rate, and do not even pick up their second playoff win without scoring more than 21 points.
The notion that having great wr's takes all of the pressure off of a qb when facing a good defense/weak offense is provably wrong. did having moss and welker take the pressure off of brady in last year's super bowl?
Teams can win with the ball control/no mistake approach, if that team has a good defense, as have ALL of the Patriots Super Bowl winning teams. The Patriots have not won ONE Super Bowl with a defense ranked lower than 5th. When the defense is below average in terms of points allowed, that approach rarely produces a super bowl champion, and never has for brady and the pats. In the history of the nfl, only 3 teams have won championships inspite of playing with defenses that were below average in terms of points scored: unitas with the 1959 colts, p manning with the 2006 colts, and e manning with the 2007 giants. You give way too much credit to the qb when you don't factor in the quality of the defense and just look at wins and losses when evaluating qb play. It also helps to have a good running game to win with that method. The pats are 2-2 in playoff games where the offense has rushed the ball for less than 3.5 yards a carry. The ball control/no mistake approach can be very good at producing wins in the post season, but it really helps to have a good defense and a solid running game to win with that method.
A qb can put up good stats against good defense/good offense teams in the playoffs and still lose. It has happened in each of p manning's last 3 playoff losses. But you have to look at more than wins and losses to know that.
People like to talk about mythical things like "clutch". Clutch time starts with the opening kickoff, not the 4th quarter or even the final 7 minutes of the 4th quarter. Points scored in the first half count just as much as those later in the game. Ignoring anything but the last half of the 4th quarter, or even placing an inordinant value on those results, will lead to an inaccurate conclusion.
If you look at all of the data you realize that the gap between manning and brady in the playoffs 1) is not all that huge; and 2) the gap in wins and losses has much more to do with the support of the defense, the difference in coaching staffs, the pats ability to run the ball more successfully, and even the talents of adam vinatieiri than any huge gap in the abilities of manning and brady. there just isn't that big a gap in the individual post season performances of the two qb's. the gap favors brady, but it isn't huge. And that gap has to do with the TEAM.
Now the gap between the colts and the pats in the post season is huge....but it's folly to use team results as your primary measurement of individual performance, no matter how you try to justify it. If you want to point to the post season results to conclude that the patriots of the 00's are a much better team than the colts of the 00's, and that belichick is a much better coach than dungy, those would be accurate assessments.
