Mike Celizic

In seven years, Peyton Manning will be 40 years old, and you can make book right now that you won’t find him playing for any team other than the Colts. Nor will he be retiring then un-retiring then retiring again. And he will never fight with his coach over anything, whether it’s playing time or a pizza order.

I hope we think about that and appreciate it when the time comes, although it’s more likely we won’t. Bad behavior we’re good at recognizing. Good behavior tends to slip past our radar.

That’s why this year has been all about Brett Favre in the NFL. He spent the summer dancing the retirement tango, then won a bunch of games for the Vikings, and now he’s getting into sideline battles with his coach and forcing his teammates to choose between his ego and the coach’s authority.

It’s like that every year for Manning. He’s won at least 12 games in each of seven straight seasons. This year, he’s the quarterback of the last undefeated team in the NFL. He started the first game of his rookie year in 1998 and every game since. If he stays healthy, by the time he retires he’ll hold every passing record there is.

Yet always, it seems, the story is about someone else who’s more interesting or more flamboyant or more charismatic or in more trouble with the law. That’s what Manning gets for being as exciting as half a roll of paper towels.

This is a shame, because Peyton Manning is the face of excellence in the NFL or any sport. He plays the most difficult position in sports with a level of skill not seen since, well, since forever. And nobody seems to notice.

So, in the interests of getting Peyton Manning’s name out there in front of that locker room wrecker in Minnesota, let’s put some pressure on him. How about something regarding his failure to get to the Super Bowl other than in 2006, the year he won it?

Manning and the Colts won four playoff games that year. Since then, they’ve won zero playoff games despite 25 regular-season wins in the past two seasons. Shouldn’t the greatest quarterback in the game do a bit better than that?

The talk in Indianapolis is about whether the Colts should charge to the finish line bound and determined to finish the season undefeated or follow the franchise tradition of throwing away meaningless late-season games in the interests of keeping Manning and other key players healthy.

It’s a great topic for discussion, but it misses the point. The real question has nothing to do with the next two games and everything to do with the ones to follow.

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Is Manning going to win them? And if not this year, then when?

He’s not getting any younger. In his 12th season, Peyton Manning is now 33 years old. If his skills are at a peak, so is his career. It’s time to separate himself from all the one-ring quarterbacks in league history and get that second title under his belt. And then, if he wants people 40 years from now to say he was as good as Tom Brady, he’d better start working on Nos. three and four.

When people look at athletes, guys like Manning get something of a free pass in the what-have-you-done-for-us-lately department. It’s the same in baseball for great hitters or pitchers and in hockey for great scorers. If they put enough numbers on the board, people forgot about whether they won titles or not. And if they didn’t, the blame went to the team, not the player.

We saw it in the NFL a generation ago when Dan Marino was the state-of-the-art in passing. He set all the records that Favre is breaking now and Manning will break in due course. When he retired, critics agreed he was the greatest quarterback ever, even if he never did win a title. It wasn’t his fault, they decided, if the Dolphins were never quite good enough on defense when he was in his prime.

Favre has gotten the same break. He’s won just one title and thrown away shots at a few others. But he’s so darned good slinging the ball that nobody notices. And now we have Manning getting the same break.

Manning is the best passer anyone’s ever seen. He’s won more games in one decade than anyone ever has. He never misses a game. He never embarrasses his team. He never confronts his coach. He’s an all-time great.

But that shouldn’t get him off the hook in the trophy department. We can’t say that’s how we judge people and then choose certain players to judge by a different standard. The Colts have been the best team in the AFC all year. They could go undefeated if they made that a priority.

Peyton Manning’s gotten them that far. Isn’t it about time he got them to another Super Bowl?

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