Similar to last year’s Super Bowl matchup of Joe Flacco vs Colin Kaepernick, this year fans will be treated to a matchup of the old guard quarterback against a newer breed of hybrid quarterbacks who can run and pass.

Russell Wilson was drafted around the same time that running quarterbacks like Kaepernick and Cam Newton were emerging as franchise guys, and he was drafted the same year as Robert Griffin III, the poster boy for the running quarterback.

On the other side of the ball is Peyton Manning, who is the true definition of a pocket passer.

Manning almost never runs a bootleg, and he can only ever be found past the line of scrimmage if it’s a broken play and he has to take off running.

So if Wilson wins next Sunday and has the same number of Super Bowl rings as Manning after just two years in the league, is it a sign that the NFL is slowly becoming a league where running quarterbacks dominate the position?

Not necessarily. A victory by Wilson and an appearance last year by Kaepernick will start to move the ratio of successful running quarterbacks to traditional quarterbacks to close to 50/50, but the “old” guard of quarterbacks will continue to be just as relevant in the NFL.

For starters, it’s important to define who the “new guard” of quarterbacks really is. Andrew Luck just completed his second year in the league, but his play style certainly doesn’t match up with the likes of Griffin, Wilson and Kaepernick.

When talking about the new breed of running quarterbacks, the players who fit that role (in my opinion) are: Wilson, Kaepernick, Griffin, Newton and Geno Smith and E.J. Manuel, to a certain extent.

In the “old guard” corner, there is pretty much everyone else, but most notable there’s: Manning, Drew Brees, Matt Ryan, Matthew Stafford, Tom Brady and Philip Rivers.

There’s also a gray area where some quarterbacks who are new to the game fall. They can throw, but they also are more mobile in the pocket and can extend plays with their legs unlike Manning. This category includes Ben Roethlisberger, Luck and Aaron Rodgers, among others.

This season, every team who made the playoffs in the AFC had a traditional pocket passer (Patriots, Bengals, Colts, Broncos, Chiefs and Chargers), with teams who have running quarterbacks having mediocre to poor seasons.

Manuel, Smith and Terrelle Pryor of the Oakland Raiders are all young, and their poor seasons can’t be pinned directly on them, but for two of them (Manuel and Pryor), health was a concern all season.

Manuel was in and out of the lineup constantly because of hits he was taking when taking off, and Pryor was benched as a result of injury and poor performance in favor of Matt McGloin and Matt Flynn at various times throughout the season.

Smith was also generally disappointing because a high number of turnovers. The new traditional quarterbacks like Rivers, Andy Dalton and Brady all had great seasons, and Manning (as everyone knows by now) had the best season of any quarterback in the NFL history.

But the season didn’t completely belong to the pocket passer.

Obviously, two “new guard” quarterbacks played in the NFC Championship game. Newton also earned his team a first-round bye, and the fairly mobile Rodgers managed to sneak the Packers into the playoffs as well.

Griffin’s Redskins bombed, for reasons that I just don’t have space here to cover, but partially because his health was a concern after recovering from ACL surgery (an injury that occurred because of how often he was taking off and running) and poor performance.

The same can be said for last year, when pretty much every AFC team had a “traditional” quarterback, but the NFC was dominated by this new breed of quarterbacks, including Griffin, Kaepernick and Wilson.

But those three, along with Newton, are really the only “new breed” quarterbacks that anyone seems to be talking about right now when discussing this “new breed.”

There is Pryor and Manuel, who are still rough around the edges and will benefit from more exposure to the NFL level of play, but it usually comes down to the big four rushing quarterbacks, who are easily out-numbered by the traditional gunslingers still in the league like Manning, Brady, Brees and Rivers.

As previously mentioned, if Wilson wins, it would be a sign that having a running quarterback makes your team more well-rounded, but Wilson and Kaepernick have both benefitted in their first two seasons from dominant defenses and quality running games, while Brady took a team to the AFC Championship that had an average defense and almost no consistent skill position players.

The balancing out of new guard vs. old guard will only continue to approach the 50/50 mark as the seasons go on, with Manning and Brady both likely retiring in the next two of three years, but this year’s draft class shows that there can still be a good mix of rushing and pocket passers going forward.

Teddy Bridgewater, who will likely be the first quarterback taken in this year’s draft, had just 78 rushing yards in his senior season at Louisville. Bridgewater threw the ball 427 times this year, making him fall into the pocket passer category.

Johnny Manziel falls in with the Wilson and Kaepernick crowd, often using his legs to make plays rather than his arm, but Blake Bortles, Derek Carr and Jimmy Garoppolo (who round out the top five quarterbacks in the draft) combined for just 451 rushing yards in their final seasons at college, with Bortles coming in at 272 yards on his own.

To compare, Manziel had 759 rushing yards last season, and had 1,410 his freshman year when he won the Heisman.

So while the Manning vs. Wilson matchup is the perfect comparison between the two play styles, it’s too early to say that this “new guard” of quarterbacks will soon take over the NFL.

The roles that Manning and Brady will leave behind are sure to be filled by traditional drop-back-and-pass quarterbacks who are in high school now, and will eventually have to step up to the same challenges that Manning and Brady are facing now against Wilson and Kaepernick.