Seventeen years ago, a two-time NFL Most Valuable Player on a third-seeded playoff team left home, fighting for a berth in the AFC championship game and a new career narrative.

In the regular season, he had left no doubt: He was one of the NFL’s best quarterbacks. In the playoffs, there were questions.

“This is his moment, nine years into a Hall of Fame career that has been built on the regular season and not the postseason, to change the perception (and the reality) that he has never been a special quarterback in the playoffs,” a local newspaper columnist wrote.

In Baltimore this week, there is an echo of the past. As the third-seeded Ravens prepare for Sunday’s divisional-round showdown against the second-seeded Buffalo Bills, two-time MVP Lamar Jackson has found the comparisons to Bills quarterback Josh Allen as inescapable as the frigid chill awaiting him at Highmark Stadium. They are both 2018 draft picks and paragons of a new age of NFL quarterbacking, both ambassadors for multibillion-dollar brands and faces of devoted franchises, both sources of Super Bowl hopes and targets for their postseason shortcomings.

But the most apt analog for Jackson might not be Allen. It might be Peyton Manning, who nine years into his Hall of Fame career did finally start to change the perception (and the reality) that he had never been a special quarterback in the playoffs. In 2006, during his age-30 season with the Indianapolis Colts, Manning won his first Super Bowl after an unlikely and uneven postseason run: in the divisional round, a road win over the NFL’s best defense. In the AFC championship game, a road win over his biggest rival. In the Super Bowl, a win on the sport’s biggest stage that ushered him into football’s pantheon of all-time greats.

“It always goes back to wins and losses with the quarterback,” former Colts center Jeff Saturday, now an NFL analyst for ESPN, said this season. “Peyton had to hear the same thing [as Jackson]. They could not be closer aligned in that way.”

Stylistically, they couldn’t be further apart. Jackson, the No. 32 overall pick in 2018, entered the league with tantalizing potential as a runner but questions about his accuracy and aptitude as a passer. Manning, the No. 1 overall pick in 1998, was “probably the most prepared QB to enter the NFL draft in several years,” according to Sports Illustrated, a prototypical pocket passer with a good arm and great vision.

Regular-season success came quickly for both. Over Manning’s first nine years in Indianapolis, he went 92-52 as a starter, with eight Pro Bowl nods, seven playoff appearances and just two seasons under .500. Jackson, a three-time All-Pro selection who turned 28 last week, is 70-24 in seven years in Baltimore and has never posted a losing record as a starter.

But postseason success was elusive for Manning, just as it has been for Jackson. Manning entered the 2006 playoffs with a 3-6 postseason record and a dismal track record in those losses: 52.9% accuracy, three touchdowns, seven interceptions. The Colts had lost at home as the No. 2 seed in the divisional round in 1999, had been shut out in a wild-card-round blowout in 2002, had fallen two years in a row to Tom Brady and the New England Patriots and had been stunned in the divisional round as the AFC’s No. 1 seed in 2005.

As Indianapolis entered the 2006 playoffs, Manning was reluctant to acknowledge his postseason shadow. “I’m caught up in the Chiefs right now with the short week,” he told reporters ahead of a wild-card-round game against Kansas City. “That’s kind of what I’m into is trying to get prepared for this week and trying to get a win against the Chiefs. That’s really all I’m thinking about at this point.”

Manning’s next game was perhaps the worst of his season. The one after that wasn’t much better. Didn’t matter. The Colts won both. In their playoff opener, Manning’s three interceptions were rendered footnotes by an Indianapolis defense that held Kansas City to 126 total yards.

In a divisional-round game in Baltimore, Manning struggled against the Ravens’ ball-hawking defense, finishing 15-for-30 for 170 yards and two interceptions. But the Colts forced four turnovers themselves, got five field goals from kicker Adam Vinatieri and left M&T Bank Stadium with a 15-6 win.

In the AFC championship game, Manning once again squared off with Brady, whose dominance of Indianapolis and the AFC had been Patrick Mahomes-esque. Entering the 2006 season, Manning’s Colts were just 1-6 against Brady’s Patriots. Then they beat them on the road in the regular season. In their rematch at Gillette Stadium, Manning went 27-for-47 for 349 yards, one touchdown and one interception and added a rushing score as the Colts rallied for a last-minute win, 38-34.

“You couldn’t have written a better ending, really,” Saturday said after the game. “I’m happy for Peyton. To have him do it like this, yeah, it makes it doubly satisfying.”

In the Super Bowl, Manning earned Most Valuable Player honors after passing for 247 yards, a touchdown and an interception in a 29-17 win over the Chicago Bears that delivered the Colts their first NFL championship in over three decades.

“In years past, when our team’s come up short, it’s been disappointing,” Manning said. “Somehow we found a way to have learned from those bad losses, and we’ve been a better team because of it.”

That’s the Ravens’ hope, too. They were the NFL’s best regular-season team in 2019, only to lose to the Tennessee Titans in the divisional round. They were the NFL’s best regular-season team last year, too, only to run into Mahomes and the Chiefs in the AFC championship game and stumble to a 17-10 loss.

Jackson’s postseason woes have been inextricable from the Ravens’. He entered 2024 with as many playoff wins as league MVP honors (two), as many passing touchdowns as interceptions (six) and a 57.4% completion rate. Jackson won an ESPY Award for a tipped throw he completed to himself against Kansas City, but his defining pass in that AFC championship game was a fourth-quarter interception launched into triple coverage.

A year later, Jackson has reinvigorated belief in his postseason bona fides. After finishing the regular season with one of the best stat lines in NFL history (4,172 passing yards, 915 rushing yards and 45 total touchdowns), he authored a career-best best playoff performance in his postseason opener. Jackson recorded 256 yards of total offense and two touchdowns as the Ravens manhandled the Pittsburgh Steelers in their wild-card-round matchup, 28-14. Coach John Harbaugh said Jackson, who’d acknowledged feeling “antsy” in previous playoff games, was “very much in control.”

“I always had that appreciation” of what postseason success required, Jackson said Wednesday. “We just didn’t come out with success. It’s just different. … Certain things you have to clean up in those playoff games that, the ones we won, we didn’t really have those problems with the ones we lost. So just me watching film and learning from my mistakes should make things a lot easier for me.”

Jackson’s next two weekends could be legacy altering. A win Sunday over Buffalo, which is undefeated this season at Highmark Stadium, would be the biggest postseason triumph of his career. A win in the AFC championship game over the two-time defending champion Chiefs — or, sure, the fourth-seeded Houston Texans — would leave the Ravens one win shy of the Super Bowl trophy Jackson promised he’d bring back to Baltimore on the day he was drafted.

At his weekly news conference Wednesday, though, Jackson did not betray any playoff nerves or prime-time agita. He joked about his pants falling on a run against Pittsburgh. He shouted out friend and recently unretired NFL quarterback Teddy Bridgewater’s excellence as a passer while wearing gloves. He hinted at his lingering aggravation over the pick-six he threw in a playoff loss to Buffalo four years ago.

Mostly, though, Jackson talked about the Ravens’ game Sunday as if it were any other. He said he didn’t care who would be watching, even if the answer might be 50 million people. Jackson’s focus was on his game, his preparation, his mission.

That had been enough for Manning. He never bowed to the narratives about his career, even as he struggled early in those 2006 playoffs, and he retired with four Super Bowl appearances and two titles. Indeed, the big question hovering over Baltimore this winter, and several before it, is not about Jackson’s talent, which is abundant and obvious. Nor is it about this Ravens team, which is again one of the NFL’s most talented. Instead, it’s a question of timing: When will all that be rewarded?

“It’s been a big point of emphasis for us, patience,” Harbaugh said Wednesday. “In this sense, you can’t win a game in one play. You can’t win a game in one series or one drive or one quarter or even one half. You have to do it one play at a time for a whole game, and you have to be patient and understand that there’s going to be momentum swings, there’s going to be good plays, they’re going to make plays. It’s how you respond and what you make of the next opportunity, really.”