Legacies

It’s the day after the Super Bowl, the perfect time to discuss legacies. Because after all, what better measure is there of an individual than how many championships his team has won? Why look at the broad sample size of his career when we can focus on a handful of games scattered across the course of his career?

I am, of course, being facetious, but I still think we need to address the fallacy of trying to construct a player’s legacy in the midst of his career. This is naturally most prevalent with quarterbacks, the most important and most noticeable player on the field. In the game yesterday we saw prime examples of two legacies unfolding before our eyes. Over the past few weeks there have been countless articles written trying to construct the narratives that will define Russell Wilson and Peyton Manning through the end of their careers and long after they retire.

The two quarterbacks are at very different points in the evolution of their legacies. Manning’s began the moment he stepped into the league as the first overall pick, and it has grown through five MVP seasons as he has established himself as the greatest regular season quarterback of all time. This season he added to that legacy, breaking the records for single season passing yards and passing touchdowns as he led the Broncos to the top seed in the conference. Wilson has followed a slightly different trail, coming in as a third round pick and surprising people by turning in a stunning start to his career. Now finished with his second season, he has already led his team to a Super Bowl victory—only the fourth quarterback to win one so early in his career. He likely has many productive years ahead of him, and he currently plays on one of the youngest teams in the league. He could easily win another two or three Super Bowls before his career runs out.

Or this could be it. Wilson could have a Hall of Fame career without winning another championship. He could have already peaked, and over the next few years we could be witness to his painful fall from greatness. Or it could be something in the middle. He could play well enough to keep his starting job and coast to another title sometime down the road. That is the essence of a young quarterback—the countless possibilities stretched before him.

It’s easier to discuss Peyton Manning. At 37 years of age, the vast majority of his career is behind him. He has maybe one or two more seasons left in him before he announces his retirement, seasons that couldn’t do much to change his already established legacy. He has won five MVPs, broken countless records, and led his teams to consistent regular season success. But he will always be the quarterback who comes up short during the postseason, and we saw that again yesterday. After eighteen spectacular games, he came out and laid a (relative) egg in the most important game of the season. Just as he fell short in 2012, just as he fell short in the Super Bowl against the Saints. Just as he fell short his first six trips to the postseason. The book on Manning has been written, and he has spent the past few seasons just rewriting new versions of it. He is a great quarterback, but he will never be a true winner like Montana, Bradshaw, Aikman, or Brady.

On that note, let’s turn the discussion to Tom Brady’s legacy. Like Wilson, Brady won a Super Bowl following his second season in the league. He then won two more over the next three seasons, establishing a well deserved reputation as a winner and a big game quarterback. In the years since then he has developed into a statistically dominant quarterback in the same vein as Manning, and the reputation as a champion has stuck with him through all that time.

So now a question: who has won a Super Bowl more recently, Manning or Brady? Most people will get it after a moment’s thought, but the initial reaction will likely be to answer Brady. After all, Manning is the one with a reputation for postseason failures. But Brady’s last Super Bowl win came after the 2004 season while Manning’s only victory came following 2006. Brady has gone eight straight playoff trips without a title, and Manning has gone six. Each quarterback has lost two Super Bowls since their last victory. Each has had poor performance on big stages while their teams have faltered. Yet because everyone made up their mind on Brady five years into his career, he remains a champion while Manning is a choker.

This brings us back to Russell Wilson. Has he now earned the same exemption as Brady by virtue of winning this championship so early in his career? Could he go the next ten years without a championship and still hold the reputation as a winner? Or does he need two more to earn that status? What will the legacy of Wilson be in a year, or five years, or ten years?

The truth is, we have no idea what Wilson’s career will look like when it’s done. And while we have a better sense of how we’ll view Manning, we still can’t say for sure what his career will look like when it’s over. Two years ago there was a legitimate chance his playing days were done, and since then he’s thrown for more than a thousand yards and nearly a hundred touchdowns and led his team to the Super Bowl. How would his legacy be different if the final chapter had been written in 2010? What have these first two years in Denver contributed to how we’ll view his career? Is it ridiculous to think that he could have more to say in the short time left before his playing days come to an end?

For one last example, let’s go back to 1997. That season we saw a matchup of two quarterbacks at very different moments in the arcs of their career. One was Brett Favre, a 28 year old three time MVP who had won the Super Bowl the previous season. He was the best player in the league in the prime of his career, and he looked ready for a dominant championship run. The other was John Elway, a great quarterback who, like Manning, had suffered through a long career of playoff failures. At that point he was 37 years old, nearing the end of his career, and had nothing to show for it but three Super Bowl defeats. The Broncos came in as double digit underdogs, and it seemed likely that he would add just another failure to his disappointing career.

We all know what happened. Elway won that year, then again the next before riding off into the sunset. Favre played for another thirteen seasons but never made it back to the Super Bowl. And what are the legacies of these quarterbacks? Because of the championship early in his career, Favre has avoided the legacy as a choker despite his later failures. Elway, however, was able to completely rewrite his legacy over his last two seasons. A quarterback who had mastered the art of falling short is now remembered as one of the great winners in NFL history.

The question I have heard far too much over the past few days is what this game will mean to each quarterback’s legacy. That’s a stupid question, and it leads only to stupid answers. Comparing legacies is a difficult endeavor, and it is made even more difficult when we make up our minds before the full picture is revealed. Save the arguments for who is better until we have all the evidence. Don’t decide anything until all chapters have been written. Someday in the future it will be interesting to look back on players like Manning and Wilson and compare them to the greats of this era, of other eras, and against each other. But each of these players still has work to do. Give them a chance to present the full arguments for their greatness.