NEW YORK — This has been a good season for the Mannings, the first family of quarterbacking.
It has also been a strange one.
Eli, in his second season, has become the fashionable Manning because his last-minute heroics have helped the New York Giants jump unexpectedly into the NFC East lead. His picture has adorned magazine covers, his exploits have been discussed on pregame shows, postgame shows and shows in between.
Peyton?
His Colts are the NFL's only unbeaten team, but people seem down on him because his numbers don't approach his last two seasons, when he was the league MVP. Among the complainers: fantasy football owners, who are upset he has just 11 touchdown passes after throwing 49 last year to break Dan Marino's single-season record.
"Fantasy players are benching me for Jets quarterbacks," Peyton says, a bit sarcastically, considering the Jets are down to 41-year-old Vinny Testaverde, who was watching games from his couch a few weeks ago.
Simple problem: Peyton set a standard that not even he can live up to.
His numbers this year are fine by any normal standard as he goes into his biggest game of the year, a Monday nighter against New England in Foxborough, where he is 0-7 and where the Colts were knocked from the playoffs the past two seasons.
He is third in the NFL in passer rating at 98.3, almost 15 points better than Eli, who is 18th. But those 11 TD passes are two less than his brother has and he's 18th in yards passing, perfectly content to hand off to Edgerrin James on a team that's winning with running and defense.
Cover boy Eli, on the other hand, has been inconsistent. He's better than last season, when he lost his first six starts and came on late, but still prone to mistakes. But the inconsistency has usually been early in games or, as in last week's 36-0 win over Washington, when it hasn't mattered.
Instead, he has excited both Giants fans and highlight-film folks with his knack for fourth-quarter magic, a trait all great quarterbacks own. He tied a game in Dallas with a last-minute drive and brought the Giants back from 13 points in the fourth quarter with two drives to beat Denver 24-23, winning the game on a pass to Amani Toomer with 5 seconds left.
That excited even father Archie, who normally doesn't like to talk about his sons.
"You like to see him get one like that under his belt," said the senior Manning, a huge talent who spent his career running for his life on dismal Saints teams in the 1970s and early '80s.
What gets Archie to talk most about his sons are their good deeds, like their plane trip to Louisiana to donate supplies to victims of Hurricane Katrina. They are New Orleans natives, although Katrina left their childhood home relatively intact.
That's the image the Mannings want, starting with Archie and wife Olivia. Charitable work and humility about their football accomplishments.
At the start of Peyton's third season, for example, he complained to a reporter about being "misquoted" when he said in response to a question that he was one of the top "young" quarterbacks in the NFL. The reporter sensed a message from Archie about modesty in that complaint even though by then Peyton clearly was one of the league's top quarterbacks, not just top young ones.
Eli does the same, responding to almost every query about his success by saying, "I have a lot to learn."
He does. But he learns quickly.
In last week's game at windy Giants Stadium, he tried lofting a pass to an open Plaxico Burress in the east end zone, dubbed "Dead Man's Corner" by longtime Giants quarterback Phil Simms. The wind knocked the ball almost straight down into the arms of Washington's Ryan Clark.
"I didn't know that would happen," Eli said. "I'll drive it through the wind the next time."
It didn't matter in a 36-0 win.
What has mattered are those fourth-quarter drives. Eli is second in the NFC with a fourth-quarter passer rating of 94.5, well above his full-game mark of 83.6.
Peyton, by the way, leads the league by far at 140.2, but that's another stat that matters not to fantasy players.
Clutch play is what made the Giants give up a flock of draft picks in the trade that brought them Eli after he had been picked No. 1 in the 2004 draft by San Diego.
Late in the 2003 season, Giants general manager Ernie Accorsi watched Manning, more or less a one-man team for Mississippi, against much more talented LSU. LSU overcame a late Manning rally to win 17-14, but Accorsi says now: "That was the game that clinched it for me."
Thus the drama of the 2004 draft and its stain on the Manning family image. Eli made it known beforehand he didn't want to be chosen by San Diego, which held the No. 1 pick. The Chargers took him anyway, but traded him during the draft.
Eli maintains it was his decision alone, although there is evidence it had more to do with Archie and Tom Condon, the agent to all things Manning.
Condon also represents Chargers coach Marty Schottenheimer, as well as Drew Brees and LaDainian Tomlinson, and is well-acquainted with the team's penchant for letting players hold out. Philip Rivers, among the players San Diego got for Manning, is sitting on the bench because he didn't sign until late in training camp and never had a chance to compete with Brees for the starting job.
Even if the Mannings have been accused of manipulating the draft, it has worked out for them.
In fact, it was another step in Eli's growth when he went to San Diego in the third game of this season, got booed on every snap and still threw for a career-high 352 yards and two touchdowns, even as the Giants were losing 45-23.
The main blot on Peyton's career is his failure to get to the Super Bowl.
New England has been in his way — that 0-7 in Foxborough, where the Colts lost to the Patriots in the AFC title game two years ago and again in the second round of the playoffs last year. That's what makes Monday night's came so dramatic; it's also what makes Peyton and coach Tony Dungy play it down as "Just Week 8," not anywhere as significant as a playoff game.
True, sort of. A road victory over the Patriots would get Manning and the Colts past a huge psychological roadblock.
Even with a loss, the Colts would remain in good shape to get all their playoff games on the fast track of the RCA Dome, where Peyton has put up those big numbers. This year, that track has also helped the defense, providing traction for pass rushers Dwight Freeney and Robert Mathis and keeping Peyton in his more conservative mode on a team that has allowed just 11 points a game, best in the NFL.
His conservative play is fitting, because the Manning off-field style is conservative, right down to Peyton and Eli talking about each other.
Last week, after the Giants' win over Washington, Eli was asked if Peyton was at the game — the Colts were off.
"I don't think he's here," was the response. "I do think he's in New York. He may have watched on television. Or maybe he's here. I don't know."
Disingenuous? More like trying to guard whatever privacy they have left.
The Mannings talk regularly, but it's often QBSpeak, most often from Peyton designed to help Eli.
"I rarely talk about football with my father," Eli said this week. "But with Peyton, we talk about football in a terminology most people wouldn't understand."
Sometime in the next year, they will be forced to talk about each other. That will happen when the Colts travel to Giants Stadium next season. That could be as early as the opening Thursday night of the season; the NFL loves to use its nationally televised opener as a public-relations showcase and what better than Manning vs. Manning.
Or it could be in Detroit on Feb. 5 in the Super Bowl. That was about a 1,000-1 shot when the season opened. It's still a long shot, but possible with the Colts and Giants a combined 12-2.
The Mannings don't think that far ahead. As Peyton said last week. "We wouldn't be 7-0 if we were thinking about anything but the next game."