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Over time things change.

Over this past NFL season we’ve seen the league transform more than ever before into a pass first league. The main point story of the season was the passers. Drew Brees smashed Dan Marino’s single season passing yards record. Tom Brady broke it too but couldn’t quite beat out Brees. In Green Bay we saw Aaron Rodgers execute an offense more effiantly than Henry Ford’s original assembly line on his way to an NFL MVP Award Saturday night at the first ever NFL awards show. Yet Sunday Night the quarterback who made his mark on this league and solidified himself as elite wasn’t Drew Brees. It wasn’t Aaron Rodgers. And it wasn’t Tom Brady. It was Eli Manning.

Eli had always been a quarterback enigma before this season and post season. He was just Peyton’s little brother who pulled off the biggest upset in the history of the league at Super Bowl XLII, defeating the unbeaten Patriots. He’d never won an NFL MVP, he didn’t put the numbers his big brother did, his teams weren’t as good, but he tended to come through in big moments. You see the spark of greatness in him that got it done when it counts. Eli’s career could have gone in two paths. The one that keeps in his an above average QB on a decent team who had one incredible night in Arizona against the Pats or as an elite quarterback that belongs in the discussion with Drew Brees, Aaron Rodgers, or Tom Brady. This postseason proved Eli wanted the latter.

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