Steve Silverman

The bottom line is winning. It’s about making plays when the game is on the line in the fourth quarter. It’s about rising to the opportunity and not pointing the finger when things don’t work out.

Winning in the playoffs and winning when the championship is on the line. Tom Brady does this with nearly every opportunity he has. Peyton Manning can only look to the East with envy.

Manning, of course, has great regular-season numbers. He threw an NFL record 49 touchdown passes two years ago and has a strong, accurate arm. He has no peers when it comes to reading defenses and making adjustments at the line of scrimmage. He just has trouble winning in the postseason.

Take last year’s 21-18 loss in the divisional playoffs to the Pittsburgh Steelers. The Colts had home-field advantage based on their superior 14-2 regular season. The Steelers were merely a wild-card team who came in with swagger, a young quarterback and a tough defense. That was enough to beat the Colts, who could not come close to matching their level of play in the regular season. That includes Manning, who completed 22-of-38 passes for 290 yards and just one TD. Not bad — but not good enough to advance in the playoffs.

Manning, for all his machinations at the line of scrimmage, has truly suffered in the postseason. That loss to the Steelers was his sixth in nine postseason games. Oh, and in postseason confrontations with Brady’s Patriots Manning has gone 0-2.

Brady is all about coming through in these situations. The Patriots may have lost 27-13 at Denver in last year’s divisional playoff game, but that’s his only playoff loss after 10 playoff wins.

Three of those wins came in the Super Bowl, including a triumph over the heavily favored St. Louis Rams in Super Bowl XXXVI following the 2001 season. After the Rams had tied that game late in the fourth quarter, Brady set up Adam Vinatieri’s game-winning 48-yard field goal at the gun by completing 5-of-8 passes on the final drive.

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Here’s the point of that history lesson. Brady did that as a second-year quarterback with virtually one full year of experience under his belt. The tighter the game got, the better Brady’s performance. It was no fluke either. Brady led game-winning drives in the Super Bowl against the Panthers and Eagles as well.

A quarterback either has it or he doesn’t — and Brady has it.

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It’s not just the postseason either. Brady has started 85 games in his career and the Patriots have won 64 times for a .753 winning percentage. That’s the best of any active quarterback in the game with 32 or more starts. Manning is doing just fine at 87-48 (.644), but he’s no Brady.

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