Greeson: Manning to the top with win?

Quarterbacks are judged beyond their statistics. Yards and touchdowns, completions and interceptions are line items that can sway history but never truly shape it.

Wins are the first qualification for great quarterbacks. Winning Super Bowls is the true passport into the position's golden circle.

For that reason, Peyton Manning faces more than the challenge of the New Orleans Saints on Sunday in Super Bowl XLIV. Manning faces the chance to be the best quarterback ever.

Manning has become the face of today's NFL. It makes sense, of course. Quarterback is the glamour position -- and the most important position -- in the entire sports realm, and Manning is the position's modern prototype.

His preparation is legendary -- from the video work to the conditioning to the complete mental Olympics he performs for every possible scenario. In the AFC title game against the New York Jets, Manning even smirked in the huddle. Smirked -- against the league's best defense, in the season's biggest game to that point, with a Super Bowl berth hanging in the balance.

Now, days before the Super Bowl, the stakes are at their zenith for Manning's legacy. Winning a Super Bowl allows the elite quarterbacks to enter the rarefied conversation of the game's all-time greats. If Manning wins a second, he will claim a spot on the short list.

In fact, a win Sunday gives Manning a strong argument to vault atop the list of the game's greatest quarterbacks.

When Manning and the Colts won the Super Bowl three years ago, it washed clean any remaining spots from his resume. He proved he could win the big one, a smudge that somewhat unfairly soiled his sterling record.

A win Sunday would give Manning the enviable extra credit of claiming the game's biggest team goal by being arguably the game's biggest one-man show. Every other quarterback who can claim multiple Super Bowl victories has enjoyed the presence of superior sidekicks making the task manageable in ways Manning can only imagine.

Green Bay's Bart Starr was surrounded by Hall of Famers. Pittsburgh's Terry Bradshaw was trigger man for the team that was the greatest dynasty of the NFL's modern era. Dallas's Troy Aikman, San Fran's Joe Montana and Denver's John Elway arguably were not even the best players in the offensive huddle during their Super Bowl runs.

The current names worth noting, such as New England's Tom Brady and Pittsburgh's Ben Roethlisberger, have been great quarterbacks blessed by playing with great defenses. Certainly that's not an indictment against either Brady or Ben, but it's certainly worth noting.

Sunday is the springboard for Manning to join the first-breath names mentioned among "best ever." Manning's numbers compare favorably right now, and he will challenge for almost every significant record barring injury.

A win Sunday, though, transforms those numbers from impressive to legendary to even the best ever.

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