Manning v Brady is the defining relationship of my adult football life.I am not alone. Ours was not monogamous. Many of us anxiously waited for this yearly showdown of big on big; the chosen one and his unlikely nemesis.Sides were taken. Debates raged on the merits of both.MORE: By the numbers:Manning vs. Brady| AFC, NFC picks against the spreadThat Peyton Manning po se sed more talent and Tom Brady prevailed in big games, in cold games, in The Game became accepted as black-letter NFL law. And now, as we prepare to witne s what almost a suredly will be the last iteration Sunday in the AFC Championship Game, little suggests this narrative will change.Manning hobbles into his last big showdown with Brady, slightly broken and not nearly the force of nature he once was.And this, to my mind, is exactly why this Manning has his best chance of defeating Brady and the Patriots on Sunday.Almost every other time we have seen this game, we have Adam Joseph Duhe Jersey seen Manning trying to be all things, to make every throw, to single-handedly out Belichick-Belichick; overcompensating for what was lacking in coaching or on defense. Even in the epic comeback year, the Colts were digging out from a hole for which Manning wielded the shovel.These kinds of heroics are not po sible atthis stage of football life. Even Manning has to know this. He is not what he once was, not in arm and not in body.This is not a criticism. This is life.Just dont get hes aged confused with hes done.Manning most certainly is not. Whatever else is gone, he has not lost his Manning-ne s, his ability to decimate a defense for a play or a drive or a half. And you get the feeling that Peyton has a pretty big bag of no way, Im going down like this on Andre Branch Jersey him as well.What makes him dangerous is, this time, he couples that with the knowledge that he cant do it all. You throw it away and hope the defense holds. You dump down, you hand it off, you trust the guys around you to do their part.Listen, I Nat Moore Jersey dont know if Broncos DC Wade Phillips has this.Or if Kubiak is decidedly better than Tony Dungy or John Fox.Maybe the kicker will screw up Vikings style, or Demaryius Thomas goes rogue. Or maybe, just maybe, they will help him to beat Brady and Belichick and The Patriot Machine.I dont know if this will happen. Im violating my own rule never bet against Belichick, especially Belichick with Brady and especially, especially Belichick-Brady with a grudge to settle by suggesting this is po sible. I just know this is Mannings best chance.MORE: Manning, old and mediocre, is more compelling than everWe tend to call these Brady versus Manning.This is not fair.And it never has been.Not to Manning at least.Because all of these years Brady has been bringing guys like Belichick to these battles while Manning got Dungy, or even worse Fox. Good guys by all accounts and both lacking Belichikian brilliance. Fox had a healthy Manning and elected to take a knee with a minute left in a playoff game and lost. Is Brady better than Manning? That depends on how you define better.Ws say Brady.It TJ McDonald Jersey is hard to argue with Mannings pure talent.Icertainly would have loved to see Manning with the benefit of a Belichick, a Gronk, a front office, a defense and on and on. This is to take nothing away from Brady who has made a habit out of turning little known hobbits into mini Michael Irvins.Brady, too, has been left for sports dead.A year or so ago, everybody was wondering if he was done and then he went ahead and put a ring on it and shut everybody up. This is why he, probably as much as anybody, has not written off Manning.He is dangerous.And this broken, not-quite-himself Manning might have the best shot of beating this Patriots team.
