It has been the worst kept secret in American sports for a few months now, and no matter how much he pushed the decision into the distance we all knew that this was coming. Peyton Manning is retiring from the NFL after two Super Bowl victories and five MVP awards. That’s it, he’s done. No more Peyton Manning.

If you want to be facetious here you could say he was done about seven months ago. The 39 year old was clearly on his last legs as he scraped through to wins on the back of his magnificent Denver defence this season, he was even benched at one stage. Officially down to injury but that was always something of a curtain. But then against the odds he returned to lead his Broncos all the way to the Super Bowl and past the mighty Carolina Panthers for a stunning championship and a dream finish. Wisely, Peyton batted away talk of retiring then, instead leaving the spotlight for the dudes around him. Now that everything’s cooled down, here it is.

Good old Peyton. There’s a funny thing about athlete retirements where a guy can take all the criticism in the world for their recent performances and then as soon as they say they’re hanging up the boots then the focus shifts to their overall career and all they achieved – rather than the short term dramas. Case and point would be this one bloke named Kobe Bryant. He knows a thing or two about that trend, from the moment he announced his career was coming to an end (via poetry no less) he went from “Give it up old man!” to “No, Kobe, don’t go!”.

Peyton could’ve done that same thing a few weeks into this season when it was clear he wasn’t half the quarterback that he was at his Hall of Fame best. Every game would have been a victory lap regardless of how many interceptions he threw. But that wasn’t really an option. Kobe went down that route because the LA Lakers are abysmal, it was something to take the attention off all the losses and the missed shots. Both Bryant and Manning are intensely competitive – not a coincidence that they’re also two of the best of their generation – and Bryant would far rather be competing for titles even now in his final season. Manning was, so he had to take one for the team there. Fair to say he got his reward. (And also fair to say that he deserves an incredible amount of credit for balancing his diminishing capabilities with a magnetic poise and flawless game management – somehow he kept up the illusion of greatness while putting up Cleveland Brownsy numbers, which in itself is a form of greatness).

That final ring was like the icing on the cake of his career but it also goes a long way to fixing the one major flaw in his resume. While his stats ride with the best of them, in both quality and longevity, Peyton Manning’s never been the best in the playoffs. 14 post-season wins as a QB has him tied-third on the all-time rankings but he’s a long way behind his generational rival Tom Brady and his 22. However for those 14 wins he has also lost 13 times compared to Brady’s 9. Part of that was his ability to drag average teams beyond their depth on his back, as happened a couple times in Indianapolis, but it was a big thing there simmering under the surface of his legacy. Peyton fluffed it when it counted, he struggled in the cold and the occasion. Falling to 1-3 in the Super Bowl would’ve underlined that. Instead he did just enough in his last game to even it out at 2-2 while playing with the best defence he’s ever had the privilege of allying with. Forget the fact that making four separate Super Bowls with two different teams is insane in its own right. Between the Manning brothers they match Tom Brady’s SB record exactly: 4-2.

This is where legacies get weird. Tom Brady has spent his entire career playing under Bill Belichick and when he briefly appeared to be fading too, well that happened to coincide with an injured Rob Gronkowski. Get Gronk back and he wins a title. It helps to have an all-timer of a tight end to throw to, ya know?

The point being that the players around a legend (they call them ‘teammates’, though they often get ignored) go along way to influencing all those stats that each side of the debate uses as evidence. Ignore Brady vs Manning for a second, many people will tell you that the greatest quarterback of all time was Dan Marino and the closest he ever got to a Super Bowl was when he got kidnapped in Ace Ventura.

Ultimately we know this is all irrelevant and when we find ourselves in heated debates about the Greatest of All Time we’re not doing it to come to some formulated conclusion. It’s just fun to argue and be passionate about sports. So with that in mind, here’s the ammunition for you Peyton Pals:

Career Passing Yards:

1. Peyton Manning – 71940
2. Brett Favre – 71838

Career Passing TDs:

1. Peyton Manning – 539
2. Brett Favre – 508
3. Tom Brady – 428
4. Drew Brees – 428

Career Completions:

1. Brett Favre – 6300
2. Peyton Manning – 6125
3. Brew Brees – 5365

Career Comp. Percentage:

1. Drew Brees – 66.4%
2. Chad Pennington – 66.0%
3. Kurt Warner – 65.5%
4. Peyton Manning – 65.3%

Career Sack Percentage:

1. Peyton Manning – 3.13%
2. Dan Marino – 3.13%
3. Doug Williams – 3.24%

Game-Winning Drives:

1. Peyton Manning – 56
2. Dan Marino – 51
3. Tom Brady – 48

Games Started:

1. Brett Favre – 298
2. Bruce Matthews – 293
3. Jerry Rice – 284
4. Jim Marshall – 270
5. Bruce Smith – 267
6. Peyton Manning – 265

• 5x NFL MVP
• 14x NFL Pro Bowl Selection
• 27x AFC Player of the Week
• 2007 Super Bowl MVP
• 2012 NFL Comeback Player of the Year
• 4x AFC Champion
• 2x Super Bowl Champion

Does that all make him the best we’ve ever seen? Ah, who cares. That’s sports radio talk. Peyton Manning only missed the playoffs three times in 18 seasons, he knows what’s important and what isn’t.

Coming back to Kobe Bryant again - the other major retirement of the past few months (years?) in Stateside sports - when you get to have the victory lap while you’re still playing then you’ve retired too late. That’s a steadfast fact, but it’s also not necessarily a criticism since, like, if Kobe or Peyton or whoever wants a victory lap then by God they’re entitled to a victory lap. Those things are mostly for us anyway, anyone between the ages of 20-35 probably came to these sports in part due to Kobe or Peyton. Maybe as an idol, maybe as an enemy. That’s not important. Those players have reputations that transcend their sporting achievements which is a hell of a thing to say.

Peyton Manning declined the victory lap but he still retired too late. And yet he won a title in his final game. It’s funny how things work out.