stirring the pot. while we are all in agreement that Eli has improve leaps and bounds over the past nine months, i’m not yet willing to put him over a surefire Hall of Famer and one of the top five or six quarterbacks of all-time. that being said, isn’t it funny that the same people saying Eli has surpassed Peyton are the ones that had him behind David Garrard and Matt Schaub in various QB rankings at the start of the season? what a joke.

Peyton has had a lot of injuries to the offensive line, and the Colts have turned to a few rookies (Richard, Pollak, Justice) to fill holes. for a long time, Indy had the best O-line in football, but that’s no longer the case – that title now unquestionably belongs to the Giants.

Eli is developing into an elite QB, but he’s not at that Brady/Manning level. in order to do that, he’ll at least have to put a couple of really strong regular season performances together. this is still a guy that has a career QB rating of 75.1 and has completed 55% of his passes (big bro: 94.3 rating, 64% passer). at least we know now that Eli will be around for a long, long time. after last year’s performances against Washington and Minnesota, i thought it was time for the Giants to just cut their losses.

it’s an exciting time to be a Giants fan.

p.s. living in Indianapolis and sending these articles to everybody i know has made my day/week/month.

Easterbrook really went off the deep end giving Eli a bust in Canton. I love Eli and he’s doing great, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

Anyway, your right Ed. What a difference a year makes. I was one of the ones who questioned if he’d ever be a top flight QB on here after that game in Dallas last year when he was clearly outclassed by Romo. I think it’s now obvious that he belongs among the best in the game (although not Brady-Peyton level yet).

Eli is shining right now because his O-line is playing at a VERY high level. Conversely, the entire Indy offense is struggling because of several injuries to players on the O-line (J. Saturday, etc.) and, to a lesser degree, injuries to D Clark and T Gonzales. But I really think that Eli’s O Line is far superior to Peyton’s O-line. It’s even conceivable that the Gmen O-line is the best on the league in terms of consistency, run-blocking, pass protection, etc. Right now, teams can stack the box to stop Addai and blitz the hell out of Peyton. Let’s wait to anoint him him as “better” than Peyton – but for right now, sure, Eli is definitely having more success, due in large part to the depth on the Giants and their plethora of weapons (something the Colts used to have but seem to be lacking this season).

but I think this is going overboard. Just a quick numbers comparison:

Peyton:
Rookie: 3739 Yards, 26 TDs, 28 INTs, 56.1, 71.2 Passer Rating (3-13)
Year 2: 4135 Yards, 26 TDs, 15 INT, 62.1, 90.7 Passer Rating (13-3)
Year 3: 4413 Yards, 33 TDs, 15 INT, 62.5, 94.7 Passer Rating (10-6)
Year 4: 4131 Yards, 26 TDs, 23 INT, 62.7, 84.1 Passer Rating (6-10)

Eli:
Rookie: 1043 Yards, 6 TDs, 9 INT, 48.2, 55.4 Passer Rating (1-6)
Year 2: 3762 Yards, 24 TD, 17 INT, 52.8, 75.9% (11-5)
Year 3: 3244 Yards, 24 TD, 18 INT, 57.7, 77.0 (8-8)
Year 4: 3336 Yards, 24 TD, 20 INT, 56.1, 73.9 (10-6*)

Peyton had a significant advantage in passing yards, TDs, TD/INT ration, completion percentage, and passer rating. Eli has a better career record (.545 to .500 through 4 years). Now, I know Eli has played great many times when games were on the line, but to me, the record disparity suggests nothing more than that he played on better teams than his brother through the first 4 seasons of his career. I definitely agree that Eli is playing better football than Peyton right now, and I also think it’s perfectly possible that he will continue to play better football than Peyton for the rest of their respective careers. That does not, however, make Eli a better QB than Peyton, who is almost certainly one of the 5 best of all time. And I don’t really consider that a knock on Eli at all, just a recognition of the greatness of Peyton.

I’m surprised that he didn’t take the opportunity to praise Coughlin for putting in David Carr in the fourth quarter of a blowout, after rightly skewering Belichick for leaving Brady in to run up the score last season (which left them woefully unprepared when Cassel had to take the reins this year).

Regarding Eli and Peyton, I think cjmulrain above has it right. You can’t really put the Colts’ mediocre record during Peyton’s early years entirely at his feet – it was hardly his fault that the team couldn’t play defense before Dungy showed up, was it?