Brady or Manning? Kobe or LeBron?

The first week of the NFL season usually recreates the same stories.

1) Random player x has a huge Week 1, prompting premature talk of a breakout player - Arian Foster

2) Random player x suffers a season ending injury, severely hurting his team's chances of making a Super Bowl run - Kris Jenkins

3) Random team x defeats favored team y, validating the idiot who picked them. And his only reason was to seem smart when the unlikely scenario occurred - Washington Redskins over Dallas Cowboys, Gregg Easterbrook.

4) Bob Sanders gets hurt.

It's funny how the injuries of one man maim the perception of another. As is human nature, we always attempt to rank the best QBs. Yet in a team sport, this desire will always be in vain. Bill Belichick has stamped his defensive genius on Tom Brady and his career. We can praise Brady as much as we want for his quarterbacking ability, but its almost impossible to separate Bill from Tom. Meanwhile, Peyton sits on his lonely perch guiding the Colts offense to greatness while his defense sucks the life out of the "greatest QB of all time" argument.

When I started writing this article, I was planning to make some mildly entertaining observations about Week 1. But upon realizing that the entire world has already written/texted/tweeted/facebooked/emailed/said everything I had to offer, I stumbled upon an old episode of Around The Horn which lead me to the following question:

Why does the Brady/Manning argument exist?

It's the same as the Kobe/LeBron plight that everyone attempts to definitively resolve, even down to the nitty gritty details. We love Kobe's championship pedigree and winning mentality on the basis that he's won 5 rings. Ignoring the possibility that Phil Jackson, Shaq and Pau Gasol all equally contributed to the championships, we praise Kobe. If Kobe's Bill Belichick is Phil Jackson, then his Teddy Bruschi and Deon Branch are his Shaq and Pau.

Unfortunately for LeBron and Peyton, they've never had that worthy sidekick. For Peyton, defense has continually derailed him. For LeBron, it's that secondary offensive player. Only Peyton sniffed what could have been when his defense miraculously came together during his one Super Bowl season. But ultimately Manning and the Colts will never win more than 1 or 2 more rings because they will always lack every quarterback's trusty sidekick: defense. Yes, Peyton has offensive talent surrounding him and LeBron had a defense in Cleveland. But both lacked the final piece to complete their respective championship puzzles: a defense and an offensive sidekick.

To settle the most interesting and unsolvable question in basketball, Dwyane Wade will have to suffer a career ending injury. The new LeBron/Bosh Miami Heat will finally resemble a team that Kobe has been lucky to enjoy for the majority of his career. Give that new duo a 5 year reign together and the argument can have a resolution. But until then, the argument remains incomplete because the scenarios do no match. We can only judge what we see, and Kobe will always look more impressive, thanks to the Laker's superior front office.

The same goes for Peyton: Until his defense is up to snuff for multiple seasons, we cannot judge him against Tom Brady. Ironically, Brady can now fully understand his fellow QB's plight these last 13 years. Although New England's offense is loaded, their defense is not. While it may seem that a potentially valid comparison could emerge, we need a larger sample size for this new look Patriot team before any Brady/Manning comparison becomes legitimate.

So until these unlikely scenario's happen, let's lay off the Manning/Brady and LeBron/Kobe debates. It's unfair to both players to compare what cannot be compared.