Rich Hofmann: Success hasn't changed Giants QB Eli Manning

EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. - It is said that an NFL quarterback is viewed differently by people after he wins a Super Bowl, and it must be true. There is no other way to explain how the Giants' Eli Manning, 19th in the NFL in completion percentage and 17th in passing yards and 10th in touchdowns, is going to the Pro Bowl this year.

But how does the quarterback view himself?

You wonder how that image changes after the shower of shiny confetti rains down. There are mirrors everywhere in life and you wonder what Manning sees when he catches a peek of his profile. Does he see a better player than he dared imagine in the days before they handed him the Lombardi Trophy? Does he see a career that he might not have considered?

Manning says he looks the same to himself. Then again, he does not do public introspection. When he gets asked to do public introspection, his response is to talk even faster than usual - which is plenty fast to begin with. What follows was delivered pretty much without taking a breath; the periods and other punctuation have been inserted to make it readable.

"I went into this season with the same attitude and that's to try to play my best football," he said. "Try to become a better quarterback through the offseason, to set my goals and what I wanted to try to accomplish. Now, once the season starts, you try to worry about game-to-game, try to go out and prepare yourself to put your team in situations to win. Get the game into the fourth quarter and make the right plays to win games. That's been my focus for every game.

"Just because you've had some success, it doesn't change your mentality or the way you approach things."

But it changes the perception. It just does. You can fight this notion on an intellectual level forever, but winning a Super Bowl trumps the facts if you are an NFL quarterback. Winning two straight Super Bowls, which Manning is favored to do by the oddsmakers, trumps the facts in spades.

Donovan McNabb knows this because he is an aware guy. But he speaks from a position of not having won and says what you would expect - that is, that a quarterback does not need a ring for validation.