Which current announcer was better on the field?

Both will eventually be in the Hall of Fame. Should either be?

On a recent Monday Night Football, I was changing channels from the main feed - with Joe Buck and Troy Aikman - to the Manning brothers feed, featuring Peyton Manning and Eli Manning, and I realized that two of these three former quarterbacks were both similar in one very weird way.

Absolutely nobody questions whether Peyton Manning is a Hall of Fame QB. Many people have him on their very short list of the Best QBs of all time. He won so many regular season MVPs that there have been suggestions to rename the award after him. But when folks talk about his brother Eli - who won two Super Bowls but otherwise was often just slightly above average - there is a lot of pushback about his own Hall of Fame credentials.

Let’s first get one thing out of the way - Eli IS going to make the Hall of Fame. Those two Super Bowl rings and two Super Bowl MVPs, for a New York based team, seal the deal. The fact that his profile has only increased since retiring - and his personality has emerged and he’s become that much more likable (there’s no getting around the fact that Eli Manning is genuinely funny, which was not at all apparent when he played) - only increases this probability.

But the best argument for Eli getting in? It’s Troy Aikman. Because Aikman is already in the Hall of Fame and it’s hard to argue that it’s for any reason besides him winning three Super Bowls. Check this out (and also, Pro Football Reference, get a freaking photo of Troy Aikman!):

The bold indicates who has “more” in the requisite category. And my biggest takeaway is that while Eli played a lot longer, these guys aren’t THAT much different. A more detailed breakdown highlights this even more:

Football is a different game during their two eras, so the higher TD% rate for Eli isn’t too shocking. The fact that their interception rate is identical is surprising to me, and the fact that Aikman, who played behind a historically good offensive line, got sacked more frequently, is shocking as well.

While not a running QB at all, Aikman still had twice the rushing yardage as Eli in about half the games.

I think there are people who argued that Aikman wasn’t actually an elite QB and probably maybe not quite Canton worthy. But at this point, with a little runway between his playing time and now, nobody questions it. He’s just “Hall of Famer Troy Aikman.” The teams he manned were MUCH better over his tenure than the majority of Giants teams were under Manning, but that’s not really what the Hall of Fame is about, right?

And even though Manning is (perfectly, hysterically) a .500 QB exactly and never received a single vote for regular season MVP, he WAS the main reason those two teams did win a Super Bowl. (And he never won another playoff game he played in aside from those two Super Bowl campaigns, which is wild.)

Eli Manning IS a future Hall of Famer, whether we like it or not. And history has already shown us why and how, and his name is Troy Aikman.