Peyton Manning deserves NFL's most-valuable-player award

No flashy passing numbers.

No balanced offensive attack.

No AFC South title.

Does Indianapolis quarterback Peyton Manning deserve to be the NFL's most valuable player this season?

No question.

Sure, there are plenty of qualified candidates -- among them quarterbacks Drew Brees, Chad Pennington and Kurt Warner; running back Adrian Peterson; and linebackers DeMarcus Ware and James Harrison -- but it's Manning who should get the award, which will be announced Friday by the Associated Press.

Manning, who shared the award with Tennessee's Steve McNair in 2003 and won it outright in 2004, could soon join Brett Favre as the only three-time league MVP of the modern era.

It isn't just the role Manning has played in the Colts' eight-game winning streak, or that he has brought the team from behind time and again this season, although those things are convincing on their own. It's also that Manning has done what he has been able to do without the help of a strong running game.

Heading into the final Sunday of the regular season, Indianapolis has the league's 31st-ranked ground game, and its two top running backs, Joseph Addai and Dominic Rhodes, have one 100-yard game between them.

Over the course of the current winning streak -- double the next-longest streak of four wins by Miami -- Manning has completed 71.4% of his passes for 2,153 yards with 16 touchdowns and three interceptions. He probably won't play much Sunday when the Colts, who already wrapped up the AFC's first of two wild-card bids, finish the season at home against Tennessee.

Six times this season the Colts have trailed in the fourth quarter before coming back to win. Four of those comebacks took place during the current streak.

Making that more impressive is that those defenses were bracing for Manning to pass, knowing Indianapolis couldn't run.

In the past, the Colts have thrived on setting up their passing game with the run. They would attack the edges with a stretch play -- basically a sprint-out by Manning and the tailback -- which would make play-action fakes that much more convincing.

"It's been a great running play for the Colts over the years because you've usually got to get some safety help to stop it," the quarterback's father, Archie Manning, said in a phone interview. "If you can get the safeties reacting, you can get it downfield. And I mean way downfield."