DENVER — Win this game, Peyton Manning.
Losing this game to Tom Brady, to Bill Belichick, is not an option for you anymore.
Not here. Not now. Not two months shy of your 38th birthday.
No excuses. No more talk about football being a team game.
You are the greatest regular-season quarterback the NFL ever has seen.
It is hardly the worst legacy to have, but you don’t want to live with that as your everlasting legacy, and you know it.
And we know it.
You have thrown 9,249 passes across 15 years, most of them picture perfect, completed 6,038 of them, 525 of them touchdowns, and the ones you will throw at Belichick and against Brady ultimately will define you.
Because one Super Bowl ring is not enough, it does not honor your gifts, your standing on the throne, king of a football royalty family.
You came back from four neck fusion surgeries for this moment, this game.
You were forced to make way for Andrew Luck in Indianapolis and decided to end your Peyton-Across-America tour in the arms of John Elway and John Fox, because you thought it gave you your best chance to get back to this moment, this game.
You raised the expectations Mile High when you followed Tim Tebow, and you have one playoff win as a Bronco, same as him.
Win this game, Peyton Manning.
Way back nine years ago, before you shook Mighty Joe Young off your back by beating Brady and Belichick in the 2006 AFC Championship game at the RCA Dome, you were quoted as saying:
“People ask me about how I want to be remembered and defined. To me, that’s something you ask a player in his 15th or 16th year when he’s thinking about retiring. For me, here I am in my seventh year, and I’m not really looking for a definition of my career.”
Well, Peyton, it’s your 15th year, and maybe you’re thinking about retiring sometime soon, maybe you’re not.
It is time for you to answer: How do you want to be remembered and defined?
Greatest of all time? That’s still on the table for you if you can win Super Bowl XLVIII in your little brother’s backyard.
Or, The Other Quarterback during the Tom Brady Era?
The quarterback who proved he could win The Big One … but only one Big One.
You don’t have to win a Super Bowl to get to Canton. Dan Marino didn’t win one, Jim Kelly didn’t win one, Warren Moon didn’t win one.
It just wouldn’t seem right if Eli Manning wound up with family bragging rights.
If you wound up with the same number of rings as Mark Rypien … Brad Johnson …
You’ve been the face of the NFL for so long, a pitchman for the ages, the darling of Madison Avenue. It doesn’t mean you don’t need help from your teammates, no quarterback wins it by himself. But they don’t keep a won-lost record for the left guard. The left guard isn’t 10-11 in the playoffs. You are.
And it wasn’t the left guard who threw that dagger pick to Tracy Porter in Super Bowl XLIV. It was you.
It wasn’t the left guard who couldn’t weather the cold a year ago at Mile High and threw the pick that led to that disastrous double-overtime loss to the Ravens that only left an entire town heartbroken. It was you.
It would be human nature for you to feel the pressure of the weight of the world on your shoulders. Maybe Belichick will shatter your dreams again. But this isn’t the time to wonder how your career might have been altered if you, rather than Brady, were his quarterback all these years.
Your arm is stronger than it was a year ago. Maybe it’s a gift from the football gods who believe you deserve to ride off into the sunset triumphantly the way Elway did.
And temperatures in the 50s, a gift from Mother Nature.
And Brady only wishes he had the weapons you will have on your side — Demaryius Thomas, Wes Welker, Eric Decker and Julius Thomas. You will drive over to the stadium with Decker and tight end Jacob Tamme and your blood will boil because the game you have been playing and loving all your life will be hours away. And so will Belichick and Brady.
“Chuck Noll said, ‘Pressure is something you feel only when you don’t know what you are doing,’ ” Manning said a long time ago. “That’s how I feel. I get prepared. I prepare as hard as I possibly can. Sure, you feel nervous, you feel anxious, but I don’t feel pressure because I feel that I have done everything I could to be prepared for that game.
“There have been plenty of games where I have said that I wish that I could have this throw back or I wish that I would have seen that linebacker, and it just didn’t happen. But I have never left the field saying, ‘I could have done more to get ready for a game.’ That gives me peace of mind.”
You want true peace of mind? Win this game, Peyton, then go win another Super Bowl. And guzzle all the Bud Light your heart desires.