Peyton Manning and Tom Brady have downplayed the significance of their personal rivalry this week, saying it’s more about the Broncos and the Patriots.
But Archie Manning said he wished he’d have been able to have had something similar in his day, and knows his son and Brady will look back fondly on it.
“We weren’t good enough to have rivals,” Manning said with a laugh to Mike Garafolo of USA Today. “Right now, they’re probably both too focused and have too much to do to get ready to play a ballgame, but one day both of them will look back on this and be proud of it. Just the fact they played in an era where they both had a lot of success in games that meant something, drew a lot of attention, the networks pushed it and people wrote about it.
“It’s really a credit to both of them.”
Archie Manning had a career record of 35-101-3 with the Saints, so there wasn’t much opportunity to create the same kind of storyline with another team.
This will be the 13th meeting for Brady and Peyton Manning, the 10th in the regular season and three in the playoffs. Brady leads 8-4 overall.
That’s an alarming number of chances to compare the contemporaries, since Dan Marino and John Elway on faced off three times in 16 years together in the league.
“I always tell my kids you live to play in big games,” Archie said. “The Bronco-Patriot rivalry has been good anyway. But there was the Colts and Patriots and now this.
“It’s good for football.”
Especially for the people who watch it.