As the Browns start to put the pieces together to work toward winning their own Super Bowl championship, they – and in particular, owner Jimmy Haslam — got a great blueprint to follow last night in the play of his good friend, Denver Broncos quarterback Peyton Manning.
In what is probably his final game, Manning had unquestionably the finest moment of his 18-year career with the way he played against the Carolina Panthers in Super Bowl 50.
We’ve said in this space time and time and time again that it’s the quarterback’s job to win the game. In playing the most important position in team sports, he is charged with that and nothing else. It’s not his job to throw for 400 yards and five touchdowns, but rather to make sure he does whatever he has to do, wherever he has to do it and however he has to do it, to make certain that his team has more points than the opposition at the end of the game, no matter if the score is 3-2, 50-49 or 100-99.
Just win, baby, as Al Davis, the late longtime owner of the Oakland Raiders, used to say.
After piling up statistical numbers individually yet coming up short on the scoreboard on a number of occasions throughout his career, Manning this season was asked, because of injuries that have eroded his skills, to learn to play much differently. The Broncos had the NFL’s best defense, despite what the numbers may say, and all Manning had to do was understand what he still could do, and could not do, so he could be the perfect accessory piece to the whole operation and become a field general in the truest sense of the word.
And that he did. In fact, in the history of this game, perhaps no one has done it better.
Making sure to keep from trying to do too much, and instead do just enough, to aid that defense, Manning led the Broncos to a 24-10 win.
Wait a minute, wasn’t it the defense that led the Broncos to that victory?
Yes, you might say that, for the defense was indeed dominant, but the defense needed the guile, savvy and experience of a veteran quarterback to make it all work. You can’t win without a great quarterback – great in the basics of the game.
While the Panthers moved up and down the field and, because of mistakes, couldn’t score, Manning and the members of the Denver offense were like the little engine that could, being not glitzy, but workmanlike, and productive.
As such, Manning will soon his announce his retirement, and he will do so in having left a legacy that he was a true champion.
As such, if the Browns ever want to get to the point where Manning and the Broncos are now, they have to go into the NFL Draft in a little over 2½ months and get their quarterback, the biggest piece of the rebuilding puzzle. No matter who he is, or in what round they get him, they have to find him. There are no ifs, ands or buts about it.
As we keep saying, with head coach Hue Jackson, assistant head coach Pep Hamilton, senior offensive assistant Al Saunders and the analytics guys crunching all the numbers, the Browns are in better position now than they’ve ever been in the expansion era to identify that quarterback, go after him and develop him. Fans can have a reasonable expectation that it will happen, that these guys will get the job done, though it will not happen overnight.
And at some point down the road when they get to the Super Bowl, the Browns have to make be certain that their quarterback does what Peyton Manning did last night, and that is to do whatever it takes to make sure that his team wins the game. Individual statistics are for losers, as the Panthers painstakingly discovered.
