History on the line for Peyton Manning

That set up an AFC championship game next weekend in Denver against Tom Brady and the New England Patriots. I think you knew that answer was coming.

Brady will wear his quarterback namesake’s jersey during this Sunday’s AFC championship game.

But this is the way it should be: Tom Brady and Peyton Manning squaring off in what could be the final game of Manning’s career. “We fight, we grind, we just keep pushing”.

A 43-yard field goal from Chris Boswell extended Pittsburgh’s lead before McManus added his third three-pointer of the afternoon to make it 10-9 at the half.

In the 2012 season, the Broncos rolled into the playoffs on an 11-game winning streak in which their average margin of victory was 16.45 points.

The only difference going into this clash is that Brady, who won his fourth Super Bowl title previous year, is still playing at the top of his game while Manning is relying more on his veteran savvy trying to rediscover his old form.

With the win, Carolina will host the second seed Arizona Cardinals next Sunday to determine which team represents the National Football Conference at the February 7th Super Bowl. They made a great play, so you have to give them credit.

Broncos wide receiver Emmanuel Sanders, a former teammate of Roethlisberger’s in Pittsburgh who slighted the quarterback’s leadership upon his arrival in Denver two seasons ago, said on a Broncos network pregame broadcast that he didn’t think “at all” Roethlisberger had torn ligaments. At the same time, you don’t want to make it too much of a game where there’s a lot of multiples: ‘They do this. “And, sometimes, even as a player, you will take a minute to sit back in the game and watch their greatness”.

Manning threw for 222 yards against the Steelers, with his receivers dropping no fewer than seven passes. We had some good field position early and we had to settle for field goals.

Just two more games over the next three weeks, but they mean an very bad lot.

Broncos cornerback Aqib Talib on Sunday called out the Steelers quarterback for faking his right shoulder injury suffered in the wild-card round against the Bengals.

Bryant had two carries for a team-high 40 yards and nine receptions for a game-best 154 yards.

“At some point, it’s going to come down to you have to play well, you have to do what you do well better than what they try to do against it. There’s elements of all those thing”.