Tom E. Curran • E-mail

He’s finally gotten there. It took until he was 33 years old and into his 12th season but Peyton Manning is now beloved, admired and respected without qualifiers.

No more “Yeah, buts ...” No more quibbling about what he isn’t with respect to other greats who’ve played his position.

Turning down the home stretch, what Manning has done, who he is and what he represents has come into focus. He is one of the greatest quarterbacks of all time. He may well be the best there’s ever been at throwing a football. He’s wedded on-field brilliance with a self-deprecating and often hysterical commercial persona that makes him the greatest football pitchman there’s ever been.

You just can’t hate him anymore.

The acceptance, Tony Dungy believes, came in February 2007. That rainy night in Miami when the Colts took out the Bears in Super Bowl XLI.

“Before that it was, ‘He’s great, but ... He’s great, but ... He’s great, but ...’ ” says Dungy, Manning’s coach in Indianapolis for seven seasons. “Once you win the Super Bowl, there’s no ‘buts’ anymore. He’s simply great. And now these last two years we kind of ho-hum everything. ‘That was a good performance, 28 out of 33, 300 yards, four touchdown passes.’ The numbers he puts up and the effortless way he does it, that’s the beauty of it. But I think winning the Super Bowl has taken the microscope off him and people just kick back and appreciate it now.”

Something else is afoot in 2009, though. It’s the fact that Dungy himself — now an analyst on NBC’s Football Night in America — is no longer with Indy, yet Manning and the Colts just keep rolling along. They’re 4-0 entering this Sunday night’s game against Tennessee and Manning is playing at a preposterous level, completing 71 percent of his passes, throwing for 1,336 yards in four games, nine touchdown passes and two picks.

Wasn’t there supposed to be an adjustment period? Wasn’t this the point at which the window started to slide down on this era of Colts’ brilliance?

Apparently not. And, as a result, Manning is burnishing his legend.

His arrival at this point of universal appreciation has been hard earned. The criticism were justified if only to balance out the fawning praise that so often came because of his statistical prowess. If you loved passing stats and touchdowns, Manning was your guy. If you loved wins in the postseason and Super Bowl appearances, not so much.

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Dungy’s asked if that dynamic ever became hard to deal with.

“We were all just trying to win so we didn’t pay too much attention to it,” Dungy says. “Our focus was on, ‘What do we do to win?’ But I think, reflecting on it, (the scrutiny) has been there from college when he was at Tennessee. From when he didn’t win the Heisman all the way through, there were people picking him apart. Saying, ‘Well, this guy’s good but maybe he isn’t that good. Maybe it’s more hype.’ I think people tried to convince themselves and find proof that it was hype and it’s really not. What you see is what you get. And he’s done great things in the league and he will continue to.

“Finally, now instead of people trying to pick it apart, they’ve really come to appreciate him.”

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