Maybe we can read into the reason Tom Brady has four Super Bowl rings and Peyton Manning has just one by reading into Manning’s response to the emails about him Brady penned, which were recently released as part of the ongoing deflated football saga.
Maybe, as Dan Williams of Morning Mayhem on Mile High Sports AM 1340 suggests, Manning didn’t take the emails personally enough. “Maybe,” Williams says, “Tom Brady takes everything personally,” which is why he’s had such success in the league.
No one is discounting all of Manning’s accomplishments – especially the numerous NFL passing records, with more on the near horizon – but could his “deflect and defer” attitude be part of the reason he doesn’t have the Super Bowl rings deserving of a player of his pedigree.
While many sports talk radio hosts were quick to dismiss the very nature of the emails themselves as mostly benign, Williams thinks that players with a killer instinct would feel disrespected by any slight.
“If that’s Peyton’s mentality,” Williams said, “like, ‘No big deal. He probably didn’t even mean it like that.’ Then he’s not cutthroat. He’s not a killer. I want all my players to feel disrespected at all times.”
Broncos fans will remember a very different Manning on the sidelines during the 2012 season than they saw in 2014. Manning came to Denver a man on a mission, pulling his receivers and backs aside after almost every drive, barking in their ears about the previous sequence and planning for the next. That mentality was seldom seen in 2014. Will it return in 2015? Probably not as a result of some emails, much to the dismay of Williams.
Listen to the full discussion about Brady and Manning, plus other rivalry talk about Rory McIlroy and Jordan Spieth, in the podcast below.
Listen to Morning Mayhem every weekday from 9a-11a on Mile High Sports AM 1340 or Listen Live anytime for what’s new and what’s next for your favorite Colorado teams.
