Detroit News sports writer emeritus and king milkshake Jerry Green opens a debate today about the greatest of great Colts quarterbacks: Baltimore's Johnny Unitas or Indy's Peyton Manning. Green is one of only four writers alive to have covered every Super Bowl, although he's not bought a green banana since Super Bowl XVI at the Pontiac Silverdome.
But there's no debate. Give me Johnny U. And no, I don't say that because I live within shouting distance to Baltimore, either. It's rooted in fact; Manning has merely perfected what Unitas created for him.
First, a few conciliatory words for Manning, perhaps the most diligint quarterback in the league. Words like driven and determined paint Manning's template of success, and perhaps no player personifies work ethic in today's NFL more than Manning.
Manning, who made his mark for Jim Irsay's Indianapolis franchise, is the latest and greatest installment of quarterbacking 7.0, built from a platform conceived in the shadows of old Yankee Stadium on a blustery night in the Bronx in 1958. Unitas marched the Colts down the field in what was America's first look at a two-minute drill. He wasn't the first signal caller to lead his team back; Ole' whiskey-breath himself, Bobby Layne, had done it dozens of times in Detroit, as had 'Automatic' Otto Graham in Cleveland, but Unitas was the first to do it as the entire country watched.
Unitas called his own plays, too. Manning might be the only quarterback to be trusted to do the same in today's micro-managed NFL, but Unitas blazed a path for every other quarterback to follow, Manning included.
The credit has to go to the player who made it possible for all others to follow into future glory. That's Unitas.
Regards...
~T.C. Cameron writes for The Capital newspaper in Annapolis, Maryland and still roots for the Detroit Lions, for reasons unknown to sane football fans everywhere.
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