Within the seemingly limitless comparisons between Peyton Manning and Tom Brady, one of the most recent has been to compare Peyton Manning’s 2004 season with Tom Brady’s 2007 season.
Cody Swartz did an excellent job of addressing the issue in his piece that won Article of the Day titled An Unbiased Fan’s Opinion: Peyton Manning in 2004 or Tom Brady in 2007?
Although I felt that his article did a tremendous job in analyzing the various aspects of each quarterback’s season, I respectfully disagreed with his eventual opinion being that Tom Brady had the better season in 2007.
As a result, Eric and I have once again gotten together to create the Indianapolis Colts’ third round-table article dedicated to covering different aspects of this comparison in an effort to reach a more accurate conclusion.
That conclusion being that it was actually Peyton Manning in 2004 who had a more impressive season than Tom Brady did in 2007.
These are the statistics produced by both quarterbacks during their best seasons...
Peyton Manning (2004): 336 of 497 for 4,557 yards, 49 touchdowns and 10 interceptions.
Quarterback Rating: 121.1
Tom Brady (2007): 398 of 578 for 4,806 yards, 50 touchdowns and eight interceptions.
Quarterback Rating: 117.2.
To begin our analysis, we are going to take a look at the various aspects of team support that both Peyton Manning and Tom Brady received in each of their respective MVP seasons.
This is what Eric had to say about Peyton Manning’s protection in 2004…
“I don't think Manning is given enough credit for taking significantly fewer sacks than Brady. Manning did not play with a single offensive lineman selected the Pro Bowl in 2004 (Tarik Glenn was an alternate) where Tom Brady played with three offensive linemen who were selected to the Pro Bowl in 2007 on the first ballot.
I won't complain about Manning's protection in 2004, but Brady's was almost disgusting in how much time he had to throw. Manning is the least sacked quarterback most seasons because of how good he is at getting rid of the ball.
When adjusting for down, distance, and pass rush, Manning even came out as the least sacked quarterback in terms of adjusted sack rate in 2008 despite starting the season with three and even four starting offensive linemen out injured, and center Jeff Saturday missing games in two different stretches of the season.
You have to give him credit for that. Meanwhile, I saw three of Brady's four lost fumbles in 2007 and all three of those were situations where he simply held onto the ball way too long.”
We're going to send you the most entertaining Indianapolis Colts articles, videos, and podcasts from around the web.
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