Peyton Manning

by Mark Kiszla

  As Manning finally departed for his postgame press conference, I approached Elway and told him the one thought that would not budge from my mind throughout that entire evening, when Manning brought back the noise unheard in a Denver stadium since Old No. 7 had retired in the spring of 1999. Cheers come in a variety of tones and timbre. This roar was a sound louder than hope. The fans were again rocking with the knowledge that their Broncos were firmly back in good standing among the league’s elite teams.

  “Can you believe,” I asked Elway, “the Colts cut that guy?”

  While shaking his head from side to side, Elway wore the grin of a man with the world on a string.

  One more time: Indianapolis did what?

  The Colts cut one of the greatest quarterbacks in NFL history.

  “And I’m glad they did,” said Elway, chuckling.

  From Brian Griese to Jake Plummer to Tim Tebow, quarterbacks arrived, quarterbacks went, but the first quarterback to stand taller than Elway’s legendary shadow is Manning.

  “He’s back,” said Broncos cornerback Champ Bailey, declaring Manning as good as new. “And he’s ready.”

  Are you ready for this, Broncomaniacs? Could it be that Manning has more skills as a quarterback than Elway possessed? Compare career passing yardage, completion percentage, touchdown passes. Any way you peel back the layers of statistics, the answer is the same: Advantage, Manning.

  What Elway achieved as the Broncos’ quarterback was bigger than any advanced metric can measure. It was Elway, not 300 days of sunshine per year or teams in all four major professional sports, who transformed Denver from a dusty old cow town to a big-league city.

  Denver was not ready yet, and perhaps will not ever fully accept Elway’s number one goal for Manning. Before Manning threw a single pass for the Broncos, Elway revealed a dream that showed how comfortable Old No. 7 really is in his own skin. Without question, Elway is confident enough with his place in Colorado sports history to never be envious of what the future holds.

  “My goal,” Elway said, “is to make Peyton Manning the best quarterback that’s ever played the game.”

  Could it be, I wondered aloud on the March afternoon that Denver signed Manning, that the newcomer already qualified as the most talented quarterback to ever wear a Denver uniform?

  “That’s up to you guys,” responded Elway, talking to the media horde that had assembled for Manning’s introduction, but looking directly at me. “I know one thing: Peyton’s got a heckuva lot more yards than I ever did.”

  Quarterbacks, however, are forever judged on far more than their ability to move the chains. Right or wrong, fair or not, a quarterback’s place in history is often measured on the number of championships he has won.

  Bart Starr led the Green Bay Packers to five NFL titles during the 1960s. Terry Bradshaw and Pittsburgh owned the 1970s, winning four championships. Joe Montana remains cool enough at age 56 to sell the country casual shoes, because he can flash four Super Bowl rings. Would Tom Brady have married a supermodel if not for his three championships in New England?

  If the contest is Super Bowl victories, then Elway has Manning beat, 2–1.

  Forget the greatest of all time. The lone way Manning can win hearts away from Elway as Broncomaniacs’ favorite quarterback is to win championships.

  Should Manning win one in Denver for his second NFL championship, the tie would undoubtedly still go to Elway. That only makes sense. While Elway might have started playing football as a kid in Montana and gone to college in California, he is now considered more Colorado than a 1977 Ford Bronco with a weather-worn “NATIVE” sticker peeling at the corners on the rear bumper. Even if Manning eventually owns every Papa John’s pizza parlor in Denver, will he ever truly be regarded as a native son?

  There is a thought that exists in the dark recesses of Broncomania that Manning should be held at arm’s length, viewed as an interloper. In South Stands Denver, a popular and often irreverent local sports website, writer Colin Shattuck opened a vein, bled orange, and expressed precisely the deep-set sentiment Manning is up against with some of the team’s most devout fans.

  “Somehow, signing Peyton Manning feels like cheating—as though the Broncos are taking a short cut the likes of which has never worked before. No QB has won a Super Bowl with one team and gone on to lead another to the promised land,” wrote Shattuck, bravely admitting that, for him and Broncos fans like him, seeing Manning wear number 18 in Denver does not quite feel right.

  “He’s a rental. Or perhaps it’s more appropriate to say the Broncos leased him. They won’t be able to put too many miles on Manning before it’s time to turn him in. Where will they go while they’ve got him? That’s the ultimate question. History tells us that they’ll get close, but not quite there, before Peyton reaches the end of his road.”

  Manning versus Elway is a battle Manning probably will not ever win among the rowdy denizens of the stadium’s South Stands. Before joining the Broncos, Manning beat Denver in eight of 10 meetings as quarterback of the Colts, including 41–10 and 49–24 routs by Indianapolis in consecutive seasons that were so ugly the losses nearly ran coach Mike Shanahan out of Denver for a gig with the University of Florida. Manning has left a scar on the heart of Broncomaniacs that will hurt forever.

  Manning is a welcome visitor in Denver. But this is John Elway’s town.

  And there is something else you should know.

  Although Elway’s reputation as a football executive is directly tied to the success of Manning, and Old No. 7 warmly regarded Manning as a friend before handing him a hefty contract with the Broncos, there is a stubborn chunk of Elway’s pride that refuses to concede a thing to Manning in terms of playing quarterback.

  There is zero doubt Elway has the utmost respect for Manning as a quarterback. But does Elway look at Manning as a quarterback who can match or better the skills that Old No. 7 brought to the game?

  No way. No how.

  And I discovered this truth the hard way.

  The reminder of how white-hot the competitive fire burns within Elway hit me with the force of one of his palm-burning, chest-crushing passes, while I sat in the Dove Valley executive offices across from him.

  I was intrigued at how Elway would analyze his and Manning’s respective strengths as a quarterback. Sure, they play the same position. But one was a fireman. The other is a surgeon. Both are heroes who can come to your rescue in a dire situation. But they get the job done in very different ways.

  Thinking it was an open-ended, unbiased, harmless topic, I asked Elway: “What’s one thing that Peyton Manning does as a quarterback that’s clearly better than a skill you had?”

  The answer from Elway was a sigh so heavy it could knock over a redwood tree. When he was done exhaling, what followed were three seconds of silence that can only be described as an awkward pause.

  Rushing to fill the dead air between us, I blurted: “OK, what’s one attribute of Manning that you would like to beg, borrow, or steal as a quarterback?”

  Elway tried his best to be a diplomat, hide his glare, and not reveal his impatience with my impertinent question. But the competitor in him simply would not allow it. So Elway spoke the truth.

  “You know, Mark, that’s why you’re in the media and not a football player,” Elway said. “Because, as a quarterback, I never think that way.”

  In an instant, the killer instinct in Elway vanished. He launched gracefully into a reasoned, intelligent, calm discussion of how offensive schemes have quickly and drastically evolved from his prime as a quarterback to the way Manning orchestrates decisions at the line of scrimmage in today’s NFL.

  “It’s an entirely different game now,” Elway said.

  But unable to shake the passion of Elway’s brief ready-to-rumble glare, I had to laugh.

  The truth was obvious: Elway never, ever allowed himself for one second to believe any NFL quarterback, from Montana to Manning, could get the better of Old No. 7.

  His protes
t against my crazy notion that a quarterback named Elway needed to steal an attribute from Manning was an honestly beautiful moment, one as intensely perfect as anything I had witnessed in close proximity to Michael Jordan or Tiger Woods.

  A glimpse at one true thing in the essence of a person is too rare to be ignored. “Where did I mess it up?” I asked Elway. “Did I poke the competitor in you, when I asked if there was one attribute of Manning you wish you could borrow?”

  Now laughing with me, Elway replied: “It’s always going to be hard, especially in my situation with this team, for me to sit here and compare Peyton Manning and myself. And I don’t want to get into that.”

  Remember when he was hired as the team’s executive vice president of football operations, Elway vowed to Broncos Country that his strongest virtue was his competitiveness?

  He was not lying.

  Elway does not need any of Manning’s stinking skills. But believe this: Elway would beg, borrow, or steal for the chance to get back on that field and take Manning’s place in the Broncos huddle. A champion never loses his urge to compete, even after a shredded knee needs to be replaced and there are 52 candles to blow out on the birthday cake.

  How many NFL cities have been blessed with two of the top dozen quarterbacks to play the game? San Francisco has seen Montana and Steve Young. But they are not Elway and Manning.

  Manning turns every masterstroke he brings to the quarterback position into something that could make Paul Cézanne wish he had taken up carpentry instead.

  Elway walked into every football fight with such cocksure confidence it could make John Wesley Hardin put away his pistol and slink out of town before dawn, pardner.

  “Would I want to do what Peyton does every time he steps to the line of scrimmage? Probably not,” Elway said. “I was much more comfortable taking the call that came in from the sideline. I’d trust what would come in from the coach, then go make a play.”

  At the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio, there is an exhibit that is a shrine to “The Drive.”

  Twenty-five years before he brought the Broncos back to championship relevance by recruiting Manning, Elway led the greatest comeback in team history. Trailing the Browns 20–13 with five and a half minutes remaining in the fourth quarter, Elway broke the huddle in Cleveland, with the tying touchdown 98 yards in the distance.

  An impossible situation? No way. No how.

  Got ’em right where we want ’em.

  “I suddenly flashed on something I was thinking about before the game,” Elway would later reveal. “Great quarterbacks make great plays in great games. That’s what it’s all about, isn’t it?”

  Broncomaniacs know the rest of the story: The five-yard pass on third down to Mark Jackson with the final quarter down to its final 37 seconds. The 33-yard field goal by Rich Karlis that sealed a 23–20 victory in overtime. The legend created, with a story worthy of football immortality.

  As a quarterback, Manning is the teacher’s pet many C+ students like myself hated in grade school. He does his homework, and checks it twice. He knows every answer in class before the professor can ask. Between the lines of chalk on a board, Manning can read secrets of the football universe using only the letters X and O.

  Manning beats NFL defenses before the snap, throwing precisely to a spot his foes fail to realize will be hopelessly vulnerable until it is far too late to prevent a touchdown. His genius as a football player is so celebrated an analyst sometimes lets his SAT scores drool down his chin in an effort to show off pedantic reference points Manning would never dream of using to describe himself.

  For example: Here is Stefan Fatsis, in a 2010 ode penned to Manning, comparing an NFL quarterback to the greatest thinkers of the history of mankind.

  Without once coming up for air, Fatsis gushed:

  Manning has the attributes of what Malcolm Gladwell has called the popular definition of genius: obsession (notebooks filled with observations on offenses and defenses), isolation (a darkened video room), and insight (a second-half evisceration of the New York Jets’ defense in the AFC Championship Game). The 18th-century writer and naturalist Georges-Louis Leclerc (Comte de Buffon), quoted in Nobel-winning neuroscientist Santiago Ramón y Cajal’s 1916 book Advice for a Young Investigator, put it even more neatly: “Genius is simply patience carried to an extreme.”

  Whew. Now I would buy a ticket to see if Manning could whip Leclerc in a raucous game of Scrabble, even if the wily old Count of Buffon demanded all the words be spelled in French. But let us not get carried away. In layman’s terms, how brilliant a football player is Manning? Well, he can walk over to Demaryius Thomas during practice and tell the wide receiver to solely concern himself with reading the cornerback’s moves on an option route, because Manning will take care of worrying about the safeties.

  Sure, you could rewind every second of pro football history and not find a more meticulous or cerebral quarterback than Manning. Go to the archives of NFL Films, and you will hear Manning tell his Indy teammates in the huddle: “On my audible, I’ll use brown. All right?” At the line of scrimmage, Manning has the mental dexterity to switch plays, using every color in the artist’s palette. Orange. Purple. Red.

  Manning is admired in the locker room, because he would rather throw himself under the bus than point fingers of blame. After a subpar performance in a preseason game for the Broncos, Manning said: “Every interception has its own story that nobody really wants to hear at the end of the day. The quarterback signs the check on every ball he throws.”

  His unrelenting perfectionism, combined with uncanny comedic timing, makes Manning a leader teammates love. Yes, he can be an automaton. But Manning is a robot with a sense of humor. “Once you get to know P, you know he’s crazy. A funny guy,” Colts receiver Reggie Wayne told me.

  Manning bristles at any suggestion he is a nerd, that he hates playing in the cold, or his ego intrudes on the decision-making turf of the offensive coordinator. But, in one respect, Manning is reminiscent of former Broncos coach Mike Shanahan, whose two Super Bowl victories and meticulously scripted offensive game plans earned him the nickname Mastermind.

  Both Manning and Shanahan are such ardent investigators of the game’s nuances that they appear at least three steps ahead of the competition at the outset of the NFL regular season. But, as autumn turns to winter, and the playoffs loom, even the remedial students begin to catch up with Shanahan and Manning. The playing field returns to level. Athleticism increasingly exerts its will on natural intelligence.

  And if Manning lacks anything as a quarterback, it is the swagger to match the big moments that made Montana and Bradshaw legends.

  Elway exuded a vibe that doing the impossible was his idea of a good time.

  Sometimes, Manning appears to be sweating every little detail so hard that he forgets to get up and dance.

  From week to week of the NFL regular season, no quarterback has ever painted in more exquisite colors than Manning.

  But the NFL playoffs are something less than art. They are a five-alarm fire. Football intelligence does not count as much on the scoreboard as pure athletic instinct. Championship teams are built on heroes stuck in a football crisis thinking all the trouble is fun.

  What can possibly go wrong in a playoff game? Everything. All at once, the sky can fall.

  Chapter 15

  Skyfall

  No man in Broncos Country better understands the ugly scars left from the shrapnel of shattered dreams. With all the character lines in his 52-year-old face hard-earned through defeat, Elway leaned forward in his office chair to issue a stern warning on an otherwise upbeat afternoon in mid-December. I should have listened. A quarterback who trudged home beaten from the NFL playoffs seven times before lifting the Lombardi Trophy in triumph knows all there is about fear. He learned the hard way, how dreams can take a wrong turn and get lost on a football field.

  “There are so many little things that can derail you in the playoffs that I never look ahead n
ow, because I never did look ahead as a player,” Elway told me seven days before Christmas, with his Broncos riding the euphoria of a winning streak that had reached nine straight games barely 48 hours earlier, with an utter and complete dismantling of the Ravens in Baltimore. The Super Bowl buzz was everywhere, like flakes in a snow globe. Elway brushed all the hype aside.

  “I will remind you of this: I lost twice in the playoffs as a number one seed. And we won a Super Bowl as a number five seed. The bottom line is: Does where you play a playoff game win you that playoff game? Absolutely not. Playing at home doesn’t guarantee you anything,” Elway said.

  It was a foreboding bit of foreshadowing. In the NFL playoffs, playing at home is not nearly as important as playing great football.

  Unwisely, I did not catch the hint from Elway. And the city of Denver was too giddy to see anything ahead except dancing on Bourbon Street for Super Bowl XLVII. And who could blame Broncomaniacs for their runaway optimism?

  As the NFL playoffs began, the wise guys in Las Vegas were falling head over heels in love with the team, establishing Denver as the odds-on favorite to win their first championship since Elway retired 14 seasons earlier with a victory against Atlanta in the Super Bowl as his going-away present. On New Year’s Eve, young Broncos players out celebrating were the toast of the town, which eagerly anticipated the arrival of 2013, because it seemed the time was right for Denver to claim championship rings for the third time in franchise history.

  Needing three victories to win it all, fresh and rested off a well-earned bye during the opening weekend of the playoffs, the Broncos’ first task seemed almost too easy: Baltimore was not only a nine-point underdog, the Ravens had lost to Manning nine straight times. Denver mayor Michael Hancock, who had worked for $25 per game as Huddles the Broncos mascot in his youth, was so confident his favorite NFL team would advance in the tournament that he offered to do a version of Baltimore linebacker Ray Lewis’s trademark “Squirrel” dance in the extremely unlikely event of the visitors pulling off an upset.