By Michael Wilbon
Sunday, November 4, 2007

About once every decade or so, a regular season NFL game comes along that has circumstances and conditions that make it historically irresistible. In 1985 the Miami Dolphins, the franchise with the only perfect record in the Super Bowl era, stopped the 12-0 Chicago Bears at the Orange Bowl. In November 1994 the two-time defending champion Dallas Cowboys, featuring Hall of Famers Troy Aikman, Emmitt Smith and Michael Irvin, lost in San Francisco to the future Super Bowl champion 49ers, featuring Hall of Famers Steve Young and Jerry Rice and a future Hall of Famer named Deion Sanders.

As anticipated as those games were, as glamorous as the rosters were, they were missing one element today's Colts-Patriots game has going for it. Never, in the much glorified history of the NFL, have two undefeated teams met this late in the season.

And that's just the beginning of the similarities and comparisons and contrasts. One of the themes -- good vs. evil -- is almost too easy but impossible to ignore as people find reasons to choose sides. Patriots Coach Bill Belichick is a proven cheat. Colts Coach Tony Dungy has long been touted as a paragon of virtue. The New York Daily News interrupted its A-Rod coverage long enough to run a story in yesterday's editions below the headline, "Colts may be only hope to stop America's new villain."

The game itself is important because the Patriots used home-field advantage to beat the Colts in the playoffs en route to two Super Bowls, and because the Colts just last January used home-field advantage to beat the Patriots in the playoffs en route to their own Super Bowl victory. The Patriots don't want to return to Indy for a title game on the road, and the Colts certainly don't want another one of those frosty playoff dates the third week of January in New England. The winner stays undefeated and controls the season. The loser risks becoming a footnote.

And it's unimaginable that a defending league champion, undefeated and playing at home, could be an underdog against anybody, much less the team it beat just 10 months ago to advance to the Super Bowl.

It's hard to imagine that a sitting champ in any sport has found itself so marginalized without so much as a loss.

At the center of all this, what spices the confrontation even more is the matchup of the two Hall of Fame-bound quarterbacks, Tom Brady and Peyton Manning, who are to the "oughts" what Aikman and Brett Favre were to the 1990s, what Joe Montana and John Elway were to the '80s. Brady has won three Super Bowls, Manning has won one and is in full chase. Manning has the single-season record for passing touchdowns (49) but Brady is on pace to throw 60.

Brady vs. Manning is nearly as compelling as Patriots vs. Colts. It's the talk of non-NFL locker rooms. On a recent day in Phoenix, the NBA's best passer jumped headfirst into the topic of Brady vs. Manning. Asked which he would take, Steve Nash, the NBA's two-time MVP, said: "I don't want to slight either guy, but there's something about Brady. He wins and it looks so effortless. Peyton plays out of his mind, but if victories and championships are the bottom line. Tom is so clutch and so calm in the clutch time and again. Not that Peyton isn't. Peyton produces so much volume. It's two pure passers . . . they're both unstoppable forces."

Roy Green, like thousands of former NFL players, was sitting at home the other night analyzing Manning vs. Brady. And Green's opinion counts more than most, even more than most former NFL players, because Green played both defensive back and wide receiver in the NFL. He was a Pro Bowl receiver twice with the Cardinals. Belichick thought so much of Green that he traded for him when he became head coach of the Cleveland Browns.

"Every team in the league except the Colts and Patriots would take either one of the two," Green said. "I'm a Peyton Manning fan. How many coaches are willing to put their careers in the hands of a player in this day and age? Tony Dungy has done that. 'Here, Peyton.' Brady, great as he is, doesn't have the liberties Peyton has. Peyton has no fear of challenging his receivers to challenge the defense. As a receiver, you're in heaven.

"If you're asking me who I think is harder to defend, I think it's Peyton. He does so many subtle things. He's always moving safeties with his eyes, with a nod or shift. He'll make a slight motion while dropping back on his third step, knowing all the time he's not going to throw the ball until his fifth step or seventh step. Having said that, Brady impresses me by what he does off the field, never talking about himself or what he's done, always talking about the team and about getting better. When you think about the Patriots, you think of Bill Belichick and his system. When you think about the Colts, it's Peyton Manning . . . not Tony Dungy or the system, but Peyton Manning."

Green played in parts of three decades in the NFL, the '70s, '80s and '90s. He played against Montana as a defensive back, with Montana in a Pro Bowl. Green flinched when he first heard Brady compared with Montana. "I seriously questioned the wisdom of going with Brady over Drew Bledsoe when Belichick made the switch," Green said. "I remember thinking, 'Tom who?' Of course, I very quickly saw how wrong I was. You know how great you have to be to be compared to Joe Montana, how good you have to be as a leader?"

There was a pause. I asked Green a question that would have seemed akin to sacrilege a few years ago. Is it possible that Brady, in Bill Walsh's system, could have had similar results to Montana's? "If you put Tom Brady in that system with those 49ers?" Green said. "Yes, he'd be just as good as Joe was. Peyton, too. Look, you can debate who the best quarterback in the NFL is, but you can't debate who are the top two."