Peyton Manning

I don't make much secret of my dislike for Peyton Manning. It actually goes back to his college days, when I strongly disliked Florida, and wanted Manning to beat them every year for his highly ranked Tennessee teams. His Volunteers lost, basically. Then he was drafted to Indianapolis, and he quickly had a rivalry with the New England Patriots, who I hated at the time. In those days, Manning was almost an automatic loss against Brady and Belichick.  Peyton's ability to choke in big games that I wanted him to win made me begin to not like him. Over the years, I grew to have other reasons for disliking him, but it mostly came down to his inability to win the games I wanted him to win. So I started cheering for Pittsburgh, for New Orleans, for whoever faced him in big games. I even became a Brady fan. Manning went from Indianapolis to Denver, and at that point, I became a real hater (I'm not a John Elway fan).

Despite all of that, I have to hand it to Peyton Manning that he had a pretty amazing career. His stats are second to almost none. He's got the NFL record for games won, and he has two Super Bowl rings. He has passing records, and generally has few statistical peers. He is an iconic star in the history of the game, a guy who did a lot of winning, and a lot of succeeding.

I think this Wikipedia passage on him sums up a lot of what I think about him:

He has been named the NFL's most valuable player a record five times (four times as a Colt, once as a Bronco), has been named to the Pro Bowl 14 times (a record) and named first team All-Pro seven times. As a starter up to the end of 2015 season he had a career winning percentage of .702 in the regular season. He holds the NFL record for career touchdown passes and career passing yards, achieved in 2014 and 2015 respectively.

The most commonly cited criticism of Peyton Manning's professional career is that despite great success and gaudy statistics during the regular season, he has not enjoyed similar levels of success in the post-season. Although Manning has won two Super Bowls (Super Bowl XLI, in which he was named MVP, and Super Bowl 50) and played in two others, his career post-season record as a starter is a more modest 13-13. By comparison his regular season record through the 2015 season was 186-79.

I think that about sums it up for me.