Good News: Found a Peyton Manning Playoff Win OUTSIDE
In fact, it's pretty much the best case scenario for us: http://www.pro-football-reference.co...0401110kan.htm
Not only did Mannings team win a playoff game outside, and not only was it (obviously) on the road, but the temperature was 40° and the opponent was (wait for it) the Kansas City Chiefs. Granted, Vermeils Chiefs were pretty much the mirror image of the current team (as some may recall, the game in question is the infamous Puntless Playoff,) but it CAN be done. Despite the weather (40° with a 16 mph wind) Manning was a very Manning-like 22/30 for 304 yds, 3 TDs and 0 Ints. "The work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives and the dream shall never die."
Or maybe this game's evidence that equally infamous <40° stat on Manning is a Texas Sharpshooter Effect. Eleven of his playoff games were at home, all but one in Indys dome. Two more were at Super Bowl sites partly chosen (till now) for favorable weather conditions (though SB XLI was a strong argument they shouldn't even be held outside: No snow, but plenty of rain; I think there were more turnovers than the also infamous Cowboys-Colts Blunder Bowl.) One was in Miami, and another in San Diego, so that leaves a total of SIX games.
One was @Baltimore the year he won SB XLI, but the temperature was in the mid-fifties. That leaves just five others:
2002: 41-0 Wildcard loss @NY, who lost in the next round
2003: 38-31 Divisional win @Kansas City (linked game)
2003: 24-14 AFCCG loss @NE, who "won" the SB
2004: 20-3 Divisional loss @NE, who "won" the SB
2012: 38-35 Divisional loss hosting Baltimore, who won the SB (though that seemed a foregone conclusion once Stabby McGee announced retirement and the NFL chose to give him a Ring as a going away present.)
Four of those games were losses, but ONE was a WIN—it just happens to have been played at the magical cutoff temperature of 40°, below which "Peyton Manning has never won a playoff game." Not that 1-4 is a great record, but only last years frigid loss was at home (so the home team had the edge in all the rest) and three of those teams were SB winners (under highly dubious circumstances, yet even if that taints their wins it means neither Peyton Manning nor anyone else could stop them.) 1-4 is only "rarely" though; arbitrarily cutting off that one win allows commentators to definitively say, "NEVER!"
Unfortunately, it's just not "definitive" when we fit the data to our curve. Not when we look at all the great RBs who had lots of carries one year, focus on the ones whose careers promptly tanked thereafter then choose the lowest number of season carries by any of them to say, "every back who had 370 carries in a year was never good again." And not when we say "Petyon Manning's lost ALL his cold weather playoff games, except those he won." 54° isn't exactly balmy, but if we say, "playoff games <60°" Manning's 2-6 (again, all but one was on the road.)
Put another way, falling two miles is hardly an ideal scenario, but we must say, "no one has EVER survived a fall of >5.5 miles" because according to the Guinness Book of World Records a Serbian flight attendant DID survive a fall of slightly >5 miles when a bomb exploded on her plane in 1972. We certainly shouldn't say "3 miles" because three WWII bomber crewmen each in separate incidents) survived that, and "just under 2 miles" is out of the question, because a German HS student survived THAT after he plane was struck by lightning feel apart in 1971. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vesna_Vulovi%C4%87
None of that means a fall of "only" 1 mile is invariably survived OR that a fall of >5.5 miles is invariably fatal. From ANY height, the human body reaches (but never exceeds) ~130 mph after just a few hundred feet, but terminal velocity is usually (if not ALWAYS) something of a double entendre. Peyton Manning had NEVER lost a game when he led by 22 pts (presumably because he lost at least one after leading by 21) and Brady had NEVER come back from 24 pts down (most likely because, well, you get the idea)—until each did both Sunday.
The 40° playoff quote isn't a statistical certainty ("statistical certainty" is practically a contradiction in terms) it's an artifact, more like a record: No one has ever thrown more than 50 TDs in a season, because that's how many Brady had just six years ago. Records are made to be broken though. The stat's more like a probability, but the last three years have DOUBLED the number of 24 pt second half comebacks (our games alone have featured two) so Win Probability has seen some adjustments, too. Win Probability gets adjusted after every game, really.
If we want a stat we can take to the bank we'll have to settle for something like "Peyton Manning has NEVER won a playoff game after the gun." Then again, neither has anyone else. Does the NFL even use a gun anymore? I can't remember the last time I heard one. If not, I guess that would make it even harder to overcome the stat.None of that means Peyton will win his next freezing playoff game; that's up to him, his teammates, his coaches and, unfortunately, his opponents. He's not guaranteed to lose it though, and a friendly crowd can't hurt his chances.
Ray Lewis Tribute Video included as a bonus: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uj2dmQruJXs
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Originally Posted by King87
