QBs are engines for Super teams

By RANDY COVITZ

Peyton Manning and Drew Brees prove it takes a good passing attack to contend.

If there’s any question that passing the ball is the way to play for a championship, just look at the Indianapolis Colts and the New Orleans Saints.

The gaudy numbers that they posted this season — some of them the NFL’s best — were the key to a much-anticipated meeting next Sunday in Super Bowl XLIV.

Saints quarterback Drew Brees completed an NFL-record 70.6 percent of his attempts for 4,388 yards and led the league with 34 touchdown passes and a 109.6 passer rating.

Colts quarterback Peyton Manning threw for 4,500 yards and 33 touchdowns, and was sixth in the NFL with a 99.9 rating. He became the first quarterback to throw for 4,000 yards in six straight seasons, while Brees joined him as the only other QB with four consecutive 4,000-yard seasons.

“Teams are building for the passing game,” said ESPN analyst and former Youngstown State and NFL quarterback Ron Jaworski. “You’re going to see every once in a while a team like the Jets hang around with their running game and good defense. But it’s all about percentages and what’s going to give you your best chance of winning a world championship, and that’s through the passing game.”

Manning is a four-time MVP, and Brees is the NFL Offensive Player of the Year. With them at the controls, the 14-2 Colts and 13-3 Saints are the first pair of No. 1 seeds to reach the Super Bowl since Dallas and Buffalo in 1993.

“If you get a guy like Peyton Manning or Drew Brees, it is so much easier to win football games,” said CBS analyst and former NFL quarterback Boomer Esiason. “They truly are difference-makers.

“In the case of a guy like Peyton Manning, he is offensive coordinator, he’s coach, he’s the guy who is really running the entire football operation on the practice field. Those players are the ones who step up. And Drew Brees has been that, reigniting his career under [coach] Sean Payton.”

Brees started pitching from the start, throwing six touchdown passes in the season-opening win over Detroit and sparking the Saints to a 13-0 start.

Manning, who had to break in two young wide receivers — second-year man Pierre Garcon and rookie Austin Collie — earned his fourth MVP award in leading the Colts to a 14-0 start.

Indianapolis ranked No. 2 in the NFL in passing, and New Orleans was fourth. They likely would have finished 1-2 had Manning and Brees been allowed to finish out the regular seasons.

The Colts decided to pull Manning and key starters in the second half of game 15 against the New York Jets, forgoing a chance at an unbeaten season. Brees was held out of the regular-season finale against Carolina. He completed at least 35 passes to seven different players this season, joining Dan Marino of the 1995 Miami Dolphins as the only quarterbacks in history to accomplish that feat.

Marques Colston, the 252nd overall pick in the seventh round of the 2006 draft, led the Saints with 70 receptions for 1,074 yards and nine touchdowns in 2009, plus he caught eight passes for 105 yards and a touchdown in the playoffs. In his four year career, Colston has 60 catches of 20-plus yards, including 10 touchdown catches of 20-plus.

Devery Henderson is the deep threat, averaging an NFL-best 20.4 yards per reception since 2006. He has 16 catches of 50-yards plus in his career, and his average of 24.8 yards per catch ranked first in the NFL last year. Robert Meachem, a first-round pick in 2007, blossomed this season, making nine touchdown catches among 45 receptions. Running back Reggie Bush caught 47 passes coming out of the backfield.