USA Today

For the ninth time in his career, Peyton Manning ended his season a loser: bounced out of the playoffs in his team's only postseason game, another double-digit win season wasted.

A 24-13 home upset by the Indianapolis Colts was head coach John Fox's last game with Denver, per Fox Sports' Jay Glazer on Twitter, and may mean the end of Manning's playing days. Unlike 2012's divisional-round upset by the Baltimore Ravens, this game didn't seem like a wild fluke—and the Colts don't seem likely to roll to the Super Bowl championship, as those Ravens did.

A reputation for failing to win the big game followed Manning from the University of Tennessee to Indianapolis. Despite going to two Super Bowls and winning one, it also followed him from Indianapolis to Denver. Now, has Manning's legendary inability to finish in the postseason permanently tarnished his legacy?

NFL.com's social media team sure seems to think so:

Let's take a deep breath.

Even if the 17-season symphony of the ultimate pre-snap maestro has just ended on a sad, final note, Manning absolutely stands as one of the best of all time—if not the best.

Here are the 10 most prolific passers in NFL history:

Credit: Ty Schalter/Bleacher Report

If you believe "most" means "best," Manning's got the most or second most of all the major passing stats: touchdowns, yards, games, wins, you name it. Manning's right up there with Brett Favre as the No. 1 compiler of everything.

What if you don't believe in career records? What if you don't care about epic longevity and consistency? What if you like your players scintillating, devastating, dominant? What if you like your quarterbacks heavy-laden with awards, titles and medals?

Manning's decorated like a military dictator. His uniform sags under the weight of the honors. He's a 13-time Pro Bowler and seven-time first-team All-Pro. He's a five-time AP Most Valuable Player. He's won a Super Bowl MVP too.

Maybe all that glittering hardware looks like fool's gold to you. Maybe you like your quarterbacks ruthlessly efficient, dangerously effective and surgically mistake-free. Manning's right there with the best. Here are the top 10 passers' career adjusted net yards per attempt:

Credit: Ty Schalter/Bleacher Report

In these indexed rate stats, 100 is the NFL average. That's where this graph starts, meaning these spikes start at "NFL average" and go up from there; Manning's passer efficiency rating was 20 percent better than the norm across his career. That's huge.

What if you measure quarterbacks in terms of playoff success? After all, that's what the whole NFL season is about, isn't it? Crowning a champion?

Here's the problem with that logic: It's incredibly hard to win a Super Bowl. Only one team out of 32 does it every year. The Cleveland Browns and Detroit Lions have been in the NFL for every one of the 48 Super Bowls so far, and they've never even been in one, let alone won it.

The Seattle Seahawks just became the first defending Super Bowl champion team since 2005 to even win a playoff game, so judging quarterbacks by how many league championships they've won is more than a little ridiculous. Yet, whenever we compare the all-time greats, we start counting up rings. Why is that?

STEVE NESIUS/Associated Press

Part of it is leather-helmet hangover. Otto Graham is sometimes cited as the best quarterback of all time because he won seven league titles in 10 seasons—yet four of those titles were in the eight-team AAFC, which played one annual title game between the champs of its two four-team divisions.

No slight to Graham, but being among the best of 32 throughout a 16-game regular season and surviving a 12-team bracket is a completely different class of achievement. Not only do you have to be a lot better, but you have to be a lot luckier.

Just ask Tom Brady and the New England Patriots: They've been no less dominant in the decade since that glorious three-in-four run, but they've come up empty-handed. A few Patriots squads have been even better than some of the title-winning teams of the early aughts. If not for a lucky break or two, we'd be comparing Bill Belichick and the Patriots to Bobby Cox and the Atlanta Braves.

On the other side of the coin, there's Dan Marino. Maybe the most gifted thrower of the ball to ever play the game, he put up points and shredded defenses no matter who was playing around him. After losing the Super Bowl in just his second season, he spent the next 15 years trying and failing to get back. The three-time MVP was still a first-ballot Hall of Famer and deservedly so.

It's true, more than ever, that great quarterback play is the NFL's equalizer. There's no more vivid proof than Manning himself: His subtraction from the Colts turned Indianapolis from a perennial double-digit win team to a 2-14 mess in an instant. His addition transformed the scrappy .500 Denver Broncos into a juggernaut. We've never had a clearer illustration of what "MVP" truly means.

We can blame Manning for his body finally giving up on him. It happened to Favre, it's happening to Brady, and someday it'll happen to Andrew Luck too. Nobody denies Johnny Unitas his place in history because of his miserable final act in San Diego; anyone saying Manning is second-rate because he only threw for 4,727 yards and 39 touchdowns in a 12-4 season at age 38 just doesn't know what he or she is talking about.

Manning couldn't carry the Broncos to the title, but the failure wasn't solely his—just like the Murphy's law disaster of Super Bowl XLVIII wasn't all his fault, nor was the Rahim Moore debacle of 2012. True, we should credit Joe Flacco and Russell Wilson and whichever quarterback hoists the Lombardi Trophy this year for accomplishing something rare and great and wonderful.

But Peyton Manning's place as one of the absolute best of all time was secured long ago. Even if he fell short of being the first quarterback to win a championship with two different teams—and that's not yet a given—he's achieved things no other quarterback has. No one game can undo what he's done, and no other star can shine bright enough to dim his legacy.