MVP Watch

Peyton Manning threw his 288th career touchdown pass to break Johnny Unitas' team record. Streeter Leckah/Getty Images

MAILBAG Peter King will answer your questions each week in Monday Morning Quarterback: Tuesday Edition. Your name: Your e-mail address: Your home town: Enter your question:

1. Tom Brady, QB, New England. It took him 7.5 games to throw more touchdowns than he had ever thrown in 16 games before.

2. Peyton Manning, QB, Indianapolis. At 3:14 p.m. ET, he passed John Unitas on the Colts' all-time touchdown-pass list with the 288th of his career, throwing a ball 45 yards in the air, landing it perfectly in Reggie Wayne's hands for a 57-yard TD. Manning is 31. Unitas was 39 when he threw his 287th. Not an easy day for Manning, who was picked up and throttled to the ground by Kris Jenkins, requiring him to sniff an ammonia capsule to come to his senses.

3. Tony Romo, QB, Dallas. Rest up, Tony. You've got a team to carry to Arizona for the Super Bowl.

4. Brett Favre, QB, Green Bay. Seems like the last time he played was about six weeks ago. That's what happens when you have 15 days between games.

5. Bob Sanders, S, Indianapolis. Did you watch the Colts-Jags Monday-nighter last week? Indy went up 14-0 in the second quarter, and the Jags had to have a scoring drive on the next series. On fourth-and-1 from the Jacksonville 49, Maurice Jones-Drew ran a naked reverse to the left. This was the game right here. If Jones-Drew got stopped, the Colts would have a two-touchdown lead and all the momentum they'd need to win. If he got a big gain, the crowd, and the Jags, would be back in the game. Sanders slipped off a block and nailed Jones-Drew in the open field for a one-yard loss. Brilliant. It takes a big man to push Randy Moss out of my MVP top five, and Sanders, at 5-8, has been a very big man all year in the Indianapolis secondary.

Factoid of the Week That May Interest Only Me

On the same day, Brady and Manning beat the 31st different teams of their career.

Enjoyable/Aggravating Travel Note of the Week

Security line, Newark Liberty International Airport, 12:13 p.m., Saturday: I reach the front of the line, hand the security guard my New Jersey (New Jersey, mind you) driver's license with my boarding pass. He inspects it, looks me over, then looks back at the ID.

"You Peter King, the congressman from Long Island?'' he says.

"No,'' I say.

He looks at me, hard, not believing me, and hands back both items. A congressman from New York with a New Jersey ID, in jeans and sneakers with a blue backpack. Hmmmm. That's one perceptive security guy.

Book Corner

Quiet Strength: The Principles, Practices and Priorities of a Winning Life (Tyndale), by Tony Dungy, with Nathan Whitaker.

When you hear a book is all the rage at Christian bookstores and you're not much of a Christian, you automatically steer clear of the book. Right? And when you're not much of a sports fan and you hear a football coach has written a book, you automatically steer clear of the book. Right? This book really should not be labeled for either constituency. It has insightful stories about life, death and football, and how all of the above have combined to make Dungy's life so compelling.

I met with Dungy on Saturday afternoon at the Colts' hotel and told him I was impressed that he addressed the issue that many of us who have covered him over the years couldn't bring ourselves to ask him about in the wake of the 2005 suicide of his son James.

"Here I am,'' he writes, "a spokesman for the All Pro Dad program, helping others be better parents, and my child took his own life. I figured this would wipe out any credibility I might have had. But then cards and letters started to roll in again. Many who wrote were parents who had been there, who had felt the same pain, loss, grief and hopelessness I was feeling. Parents who, like us, were retracing their every step, trying to figure out what went wrong and what they could have done differently.''

Dungy learned suicide thoughts were far more prevalent in the youth of today than yesterday and, as difficult as it was, he learned to accept what his son did.

One insightful football part of the book detailed his first meeting with Manning after being named coach in 2002. Manning, Dungy wrote, "was concerned because he perceived that I might want to be conservative and not score points. He'd seen many Buccaneers games in which my teams scored very few points. 'I like points,' I told him. 'I like mainly having more points than the other team when the game ends. What I want to teach our offense is how to avoid turning over the ball and putting our defense in a bad position... If we're going to win, you're going to have to trust me. You're going to have to trust that as we add defensive talent, it's part of a strategy to build a complete team so we can win...' Peyton nodded, but I'm not certain he really believed it... I promoted this philosophy for about a year and a half before I felt that everyone, including Peyton, really believed in it.' ''

Interesting. I never sensed that around Manning when Dungy arrived, but he'd never let the outside world see that.

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