What a dumb fucking argument, OOBL. I won't say Brady is better than Manning, but this argument isn't the way to settle things.
The 2008 Patriots' squad was essentially the same team as the 16-0, Super Bowl bound 2007 Patriots team yet they ended up at 11-5 and missing playoffs, minus Asante Samuel.
Why were they 11-5? Because they played the NFC West, which was a guaranteed four victories when you consider the only tough team (Arizona) had to come into New England in December and play in a blizzard, which saw the Patriots winning 47-7 in a game that doesn't even count.
The 2008 team was 7-5 before their wonderful creampuff ending of Seattle, Oakland, Arizona (blizzard) and Buffalo. They lost four games to playoff contenders.
The Patriots were lucky they got to play 2-4 KC, 5-11 Oakland, 8-8 Denver, 7-9 Buffalo twice, 2-14 St. Louis, 4-12 Seattle, 7-9 San Fran, and 8-8 Arizona in blizzard conditions. That is eight guaranteed wins considering the talent that was on the team.
If that same squad had to play the 2007 schedule vs. the dominant NFC East (where 8-8 was the WORST record in the division, let alone the division winner like the NFC West was) and an AFC North division they would've been lucky to go 8-8.
I won't even get into the fact that Cassel had been with New England learning the system for 3+ years under the best QB/coach in the game whereas Collins is half in the bag every game and showed up a week before the season.
All your argument says is that the 2008 Patriots', as a whole, were better than the 2011 Colts. Considering the 2007 Patriots' went undefeated and the 2011 Colts had already been predicted to lose the division to the Texans before Peyton went down, that's not something that is hard to predict.
And as for this system BS, Cassel was practically a pro bowl QB last year on an awful Kansas City team with the same creampuff schedule he had in New England. He's not THAT bad of a quarterback against easy competition.