by Mark Kiszla
“Wanna know the truth? My head was never right all season long,” Hessler told me. Hidden from the headlines was the real nitty-gritty of why Hessler was so distracted. On November 4, three days after the Buffaloes lost to Missouri in Boulder, Hessler became the father to a son, a child born out of wedlock. “Being a dad is a blessing,” Hessler confessed, “but at the time, I was a mess.”
Manning had no such drama. He was the first player taken in the 1998 draft, by Indianapolis.
Hessler began the same odyssey experienced by many young men fresh out of college, with no map for the rest of life. Hessler chased dreams on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean, briefly playing quarterback for vino and pizza in Europe. He also spectacularly failed in an attempt to get back together with his true sports love, as a minor-leaguer with the Colorado Rockies baseball organization. “Lost my fastball while playing quarterback in college. And I never did find it,” Hessler said.
His glory days had passed Hessler by. Early in his college career, after Hessler had come off the bench to rally the Buffaloes to victory against third-ranked Texas, Neuheisel proclaimed: “John Hessler is going to go down in Colorado football history as the Comeback Kid.”
Little did Neuheisel know how prophetic those words would ultimately be.
Settled in a thoroughly adult routine as a seventh-grade social studies teacher and an assistant football coach at Regis Jesuit High School, Hessler was driving down Highway 76 near Denver in October 2003 when he got blindsided by a hit that nearly killed him. A Chevy Blazer clipped Hessler’s Honda Accord, sending him careening across the median and into the path of a pickup truck. The driver of the SUV stepped on the gas, ran like a coward, and has never been caught.
Hessler was lucky to get to the hospital alive. He slipped into a coma that lasted 33 days. “There was a time when the doctors gave me 24 hours to live. Do you believe it? That’s one thing that blows my mind,” Hessler said.
His weight dropped to 143 pounds. A titanium plate was used to patch his skull. Hessler felt trapped inside his broken body. A quarterback who once threw two touchdown passes in the Cotton Bowl was told extremely depressing news: Relearning to walk would take years.
Why get out of bed and out of the house, if there was no place to go, no job waiting, no real hope? Hessler stopped dreaming. He forgot how. At one point, there was a do-not-resuscitate order taped to his refrigerator door. He cursed God and cried. “We’re not talking little tears,” Hessler said. “I was flat-out bawling, crying so hard to the point where I couldn’t breathe.”
Nearly a decade after being left for dead at the side of the road, a guy who never sweated the small details still has difficulty getting the trivial details of life to stick in his brain, a lingering effect of the accident. For example: Regardless of how many times Hessler visits his favorite neighborhood lunch spot, he never recalls whether or not flavored ice tea is on the menu, and checks each visit with the waitress, as if asking for the first time.
But, from his personality to his fondest memories, everything that is essential to making him “Hess” survived the tragic accident, stronger than ever. The lyrics of a favorite song by Rascal Flatts? Every word is chiseled in Hessler’s brain. “Hoping I would find love along the broken road,” Hessler will croon, tears of joy unabashedly streaming down his cheek. Or ask what date changed his life forever, and without a second of hesitation, Hessler will respond: “April 20, 2007.”
That is the spring day a physical therapist named Sarah Bindel walked into his life and took a sledgehammer to the metal walker Hessler used more as an emotional crutch than a tool to support his weight. Bindel was the first person able to make Hessler stop the pity party, get off his lazy butt, and stand on his own two feet.
No wonder Hessler fell so hard in love with her. They married in February 2010. “Who would have thought I’d ever get married? Well, to tell the truth, nobody,” Hessler said. “As Sarah was walking down the aisle toward me at the wedding, I cried. I thought the day would never come. It was a better feeling than anything I ever did playing sports. Why? Football is only temporary. Being married is forever.”
These days, Hessler volunteers as an assistant coach in football and baseball at his neighborhood high school. He has taught himself to play golf. He watches Colorado or the Broncos with as unblinkingly tough, analytical eyes as Neuheisel ever watched him. But the childlike wonder for sports has never left Hessler, which is why he digs memorabilia: a T-shirt brought back to the United States from the Summer Olympics in London; a baseball cap from the Traverse City Beach Bums, an independent team of misfits based in Michigan; an autograph from a pro athlete. All tickle him. But, when it comes to an autograph, not just any name scribbled on a scrap of paper will do. Hessler only collects autographs from the best.
Manning was raised by a famous quarterback. Archie taught his son more than how to play a quarterback, he taught him what it meant to be a quarterback. By example, the elder Manning also demonstrated that being a quarterback also required a man to serve as a goodwill ambassador for your team, your city, and your sport.
From Knoxville to Indianapolis to Denver, the current Broncos quarterback has passed too many milestones to count. But, without doing an official count, Manning can be pretty confident he has signed his name on a ticket, T-shirt, or football more than twice for every one of his 60,000 passing yards in the NFL.
“Growing up with a dad who got asked for a lot of autographs, I used to see it a lot after games,” Manning said. “After wins or after losses, he always took time to sign. It makes an impression on a young kid.”
It does not require more than a few seconds to create a lifetime memory. During one of the earliest days of his first training camp with the Broncos, Manning spotted a young boy carrying a plastic water bottle and asked the kid if he could lend a thirsty NFL quarterback a swallow. Wide-eyed, the boy watched one of the all-time great players squeeze the bottle, as Manning sprayed a stream of cool refreshment into the same mouth that had been barking signals to Demaryius Thomas only minutes earlier.
Before handing the bottle back to the kid, Manning secretly gave the lid two quick turns. When his new, young friend raised the bottle and squeezed, the lid popped off, and a small waterfall splashed the boy’s face. Got ya! This classic, harmless football prank gets them every time. Punked by an NFL legend. For a Broncos fan, it was a story guaranteed to bring laughter in the retelling for a lifetime.
Rather than head for the showers, Manning gladly signs under the heat of the summer sun. During the week of the Pro Bowl, when a tropical rainstorm not only put an early halt to practice but also made a tourist wonder if Oahu might sink into the Pacific Ocean, I got as drenched as Carl Spackler during his “I don’t think the heavy stuff’s gonna come down for quite a while” scene in the movie Caddyshack, as Manning signed for a line of admirers that went on forever. With every stroke of his pen from Denver to Hawaii, Manning built a relationship with a new fan base, adding a line to the second chapter of his NFL life.
“Sometimes I hear, ‘So and so is a jerk,’” said Manning, repeating a frequent fan lament about some “stuck-up” athlete. “I’m like, ‘Why is he a jerk?’ And they say, ‘Well, he was sprinting to catch his flight and I asked him for an autograph and he wouldn’t sign.’ I go: ‘Well, maybe he had to catch his flight.’”
After beating the Chiefs 17–9 in Kansas City on Thanksgiving weekend, Manning was walking toward the Broncos team bus when he was stopped by an autograph hound. It was Chiefs starting running back Jamaal Charles, running an errand for his mother, who was too bashful to ask Manning. “She was shy. So I told my mom, ‘Give me the paper, I’ll go do it for you,’” Charles said.
A television crew caught the scene on video, and it became a source of controversy among the crabbier faction of Chiefs Nation, with critics complaining that if Charles was not so starstruck by Manning, Kansas City might have had a better shot at beating the Broncos quarterback. Newsflash: Football is a violent and
competitive, but it seldom resembles the 100-yard war we saw in the larger-than-life myths created by NFL Films. “I don’t think it was a big deal,” said Charles, absolutely unashamed about getting a signature from Manning. “People do it every week. We’re like brothers, a fraternity in the game.”
Once you’re in the football brotherhood, that fraternity membership is good for life, no matter where life might take you. Random acts of kindness are not only permitted in the league, but take place on any given Sunday.
During his 11th NFL season, Justin Bannan wrestled in the trenches as a defensive tackle with the Broncos. Way back in 1997, during that lousy senior season Hessler had with the Buffaloes, Bannan was a freshman from California on that Colorado team. The quarterback made Bannan feel at home.
And the football fraternity never forgets. Out of a sense of modesty, Bannan will probably hate the world knowing, but he left two tickets for Hessler to attend every home Broncos game in 2012.
“I never met Peyton Manning in college. But I knew about him, and I knew he was stinking good. Now, I sit in the stadium, and as I see Manning come to the line of scrimmage and do his checks, I’m thinking along with him, predicting what he will do with the football in my mind. In my head, I’m playing quarterback along with him. I love watching Manning, and here’s what I admire: I bet Peyton Manning had to completely relearn how to throw a football after those neck surgeries. When he first picked up a football, it had to feel foreign in his hand. But look at him now. He’s amazing,” said Hessler, who has a hard-earned appreciation for the rigor, stress, and uncertainty of major rehabilitation.
“I know one thing: Just because a guy’s an NFL quarterback doesn’t mean he’s any good. Manning is one of the greatest of all time. But I can’t even believe Tim Tebow is in the dang league. I used to hear people in Denver say, ‘Thank God for Tebow.’ And I thought at the time: ‘If God’s a Broncos fan, then why are we stuck with Tebow?’ If God had a plan for the Broncos, then it must have been for Tebow to leave town, so we could have Peyton Manning as our quarterback. Thank God.”
Every true orange-and-blue Broncomaniac has a game-day ritual. In 2012, this was what Hessler did every Sunday that Denver played at home, without fail. He would rise early, pack a lunch with his wife, then ride to the stadium, arriving four hours before kickoff. Then, Sarah and he would claim a spot near the players’ entrance to the locker room.
Hessler was on a mission. He wanted Manning’s autograph. The quarterback signs before games. Week after week, from the home-opener against Pittsburgh to a late October date against New Orleans, Hessler and his spouse would stake out Manning. Week after week, they would fail to get his attention.
But give up? No way.
The security guards at the stadium recognized the former CU star. Hessler asked a friend on the Broncos’ staff to tell Manning to look for him. Finally, on November 18, when Hessler shouted to number 18, Manning stopped.
Two of the premier college quarterbacks of 1997, face-to-face after all these years.
Gripped tight in Hessler’s hands was one of his most cherished pieces of sports memorabilia: A 16-year-old copy of the Sporting News, with his face on the cover.
“My words to him were: ‘Hey, Peyton Manning, do you remember this magazine from your senior year at Tennessee?’” Hessler said. “Peyton looked at the magazine cover. And he looked at me. And then Peyton looked back at my photo on the magazine again. He got a weird look on his face and said: ‘What the heck?’”
Hessler implored Manning to open the magazine to a page marked with a paper clip. The Broncos’ quarterback took a gander at the Sporting News story on him as a far younger man. Next to a photograph of a young QB throwing a football in a Tennessee uniform, Manning signed his name, and handed the magazine back to Hessler.
“Thanks, man,” said Hessler, his voice full of gratitude. But the Alfred E. Neuman inside him couldn’t resist. And, peer to peer, Hessler needled Manning, the way athletes do: “The Sporting News put me on the cover and not you, buddy. You’ve got to love that.”
Manning shook his head and chuckled.
“I remember Hessler well from playing at Colorado. But until Chris Valenti, our equipment guy with the Broncos, who’s also a big Buff supporter, told me about everything Hessler has been through since he left CU, I was not aware of it,” Manning told me, vividly remembering the scene weeks after crossing paths with Hessler in the parking lot of Sports Authority Stadium at Mile High. “I’ve got to say, it was good to finally meet him. He’s a quarterback from my era. We had just a short visit, but it will be hard to forget. I would say in the autograph world, nothing surprises me any more. But when Hessler handed me a magazine with his face on the cover? That was a new request I had not ever seen. A first for me. That was definitely a new one.”
There were skeptics who wondered if Manning could ever walk back on an NFL field and command the same respect as before his neck surgeries.
After his auto accident, there were nights when Hessler wondered if he would ever walk again without fear of falling.
Once a quarterback, always a quarterback.
It’s the best fraternity in sports.
Every autograph by Manning is signed with respect for how lucky he is to be a quarterback.
Once in a blue moon, an autograph might even be the signature moment forever linking the lives of two strangers.
When Broncos executive John Elway signed Peyton Manning to a $96 million contract in March 2012, the investment paid off handsomely, with two trips to the Super Bowl during the next four seasons. © Eric Lars Bakke/Denver Broncos
Out of the public eye, Manning might have faced his toughest challenge of the 2012 NFL season while rehabilitating in the team’s weight room. “Certain things are harder for me than it used to be. It’s a different body I’m playing in,” he said.
© Eric Lars Bakke/Denver Broncos
Manning estimates he has gladly given his autograph to fans more than 100,000 times since college. One caveat: Don’t offer him a Terrible Towel from the Pittsburgh Steelers. He won’t sign it. © Eric Lars Bakke/Denver Broncos
After the Broncos hired Gary Kubiak as coach, no longer was the team’s offense built around Manning’s skills, and the veteran quarterback admitted learning a new scheme was extremely difficult. © Eric Lars Bakke/Denver Broncos
With this catch by Demaryius Thomas against the San Francisco 49ers on October 19, 2014, Manning became the NFL’s all-time leader in touchdown passes. © Eric Lars Bakke/Denver Broncos
During 58 regular-season games in Denver, Manning passed for 17,112 yards and 140 touchdowns, while also being named MVP of the league during the 2013 season, when he was 37 years old. © Eric Lars Bakke/Denver Broncos
November 15, 2015: A day that will live in infamy in the history of Manning’s career. He was benched for Brock Osweiler during a loss to Kansas City, creating
a quarterback controversy in Denver. © Eric Lars Bakke/Denver Broncos
While Manning recovered from a painful foot injury, Osweiler stepped in and won five games as the starting QB for Denver in 2015, including a crucial 30–24 overtime victory against New England. Manning was to return to the starting line-up in the last regular game of the season, coming off the bench against San Diego. © Eric Lars Bakke/Denver Broncos
The Last Rodeo: During his final game in 17 seasons as a pro, Manning lifted the Vince Lombardi Trophy after beating Carolina 24–10 in Super Bowl 50 and retired from the NFL as a champion. © Eric Lars Bakke/Denver Broncos
Chapter 11
Genius at Work
Peyton Manning sees a different game than you or me. On the football field, he sees dead people. Oh, they are still breathing. But the defenders are dead before the football is snapped, with no chance to prevent Manning from throwing another dagger to the heart.
Touchdown, Denver.
Manning has a beautiful mind, but the eye of an artist.
To break down every nuance of a game and grade the
performance of players, NFL coaches rely on the eye in the sky, a camera placed high above the stadium floor that provides an unblinking view called the All-22, which tracks every movement and mistake of all the athletes on both sides of the football.
The genius of Manning? When he walks to the line of scrimmage to call a play, change the blocking scheme of his offensive line, or make an audible, it is as if the All-22 is playing in his head on a continuous loop.
The processing speed of his eyes slows down everything on the field, to the point where it sometimes seems as if Manning can see the future with 20/20 vision.
Or as one NFL coach told me: “You know what’s most amazing about Peyton Manning as a quarterback? Here’s the thing: He is able to take what has been studied for hours on film, process all that information, and instantly recognize a situation in the split-second heat of a game, then get the offense in the perfect play for the situation and complete a throw that makes a real difference. The football he throws might not always be pretty. But the ball he throws has eyes. Manning sees things on the football field other quarterbacks don’t.”
The eyes are what make him PFM.
From inside Manning’s head, he sees ways to win in all 64 vibrant hues in the crayon box. And he colors outside the lines.
How awesome must it be to see what Manning sees?
Here are three plays from the 2012 season, dissected for me in the super-slow motion of videotape by trained NFL observers. Here are three prime examples of a genius at work.
Date: September 9, 2012
Opponent: Pittsburgh Steelers