Honestly, even Jets fans find this article dumb:
Before you send that email calling me crazy or mocking me only days after I wrote that Manning is the fourth-best quarterback of all time, let’s put this in perspective. It is impossible to truly measure Roethlisberger against Manning or Tom Brady(notes) just yet.
But, I, Jason Cole, am going to do it anyway because I've got a deadline and I have no interesting or thought-provoking ideas at at present. Instead, I'll just write an article stating Ben Roethisberger is better than Peyton Manning without any facts or numbers to back up the claim. Oh, did I mention I got paid to write this?
The bottom line is this: Roethlisberger is currently 8-2 in the playoffs, has two Super Bowl rings – including his great final drive against Arizona – and a quarterback rating of 87.2 in the playoffs. That includes his bad performance in the Super Bowl win against Seattle, a bad first half in a playoff loss to Jacksonville and a typically bad playoff game against New England in the 2004 playoffs when he was a rookie.
For Manning, he is now 9-9 in the playoffs over his 12-year career, has one Super Bowl win, is coming off a bad finish against New Orleans and has a quarterback rating of 95.5 in the playoffs. If you break down the stats further, you’ll note that the Colts have asked Manning to do a lot more (38.4 attempts per game) than the Steelers have of Roethlisberger (28.8 attempts).
But the bottom line is that Roethlisberger has succeeded (he was great in the 2008 playoffs and also in the 2005 playoffs before the Super Bowl against Seattle) and Manning has struggled.
Hmm, yes. Peyton Manning's QB rating in the playoffs is 95.5. Meanwhile, Ben's is 87.2. And even though Peyton has a better rating and performs better than Ben Roethlisberger in the playoffs despite being asked to do more, Jason somehow feels Ben has "succeeded" whereas Peyton has "struggled."
I guess we'll also just, you know, forget about that Super Bowl against the Seahawks which saw Roethlisberger light up the stats with a QB rating of 22. I could go out on a football field on gameday, fart on the ball, and get a better rating than that. But, such numbers and statistics have no place in Jason Cole's theorem. Ben is a "winner" because his team "wins" even if he stinks up the joint. Meanwhile, Peyton Manning tosses a 95.5 QB rating in playoff games, which is better than both Ben Roethlisberger and Tom Brady, but he is "struggling."
I didn't get the chance to talk to Jason while at the Super Bowl, and I think that might have been a good thing. Articles like this are examples of the kind of lazy, sloppy writing I just cannot stand. I continue to maintain that Cole is stealing money from Yahoo! when he gets paid to write articles like this.
Oh, and before Steelers fans start getting all Mike Tunison on me, kindly know that I think Ben is a very good QB. However, I think I can state pretty confidently that most Steelers fans do not think Ben is better than Peyton. However, if some do, then they are are dumb as Jason Cole's article.