Peyton Manning

by Mark Kiszla

  “I’m still capable of getting lost on my way to the barber shop, because I’ve never really had a good sense of direction. So I still might have to call my wife from the car to find my way around town,” said Manning, shaking his head with bemusement at his chronic inability to differentiate north from south unless he is on a football field.

  Hurry? Hurry? Well, want to know the real secret of Manning’s success with the Broncos after a tumultuous year when both the game he loved and the only job he ever wanted were taken away from him in Indianapolis?

  The secret was slowing down. Manning, the riddler with an insatiable desire to know it all and know it all now, managed to take it one step at a time, while rebuilding his quarterback skills from scratch and learning to heed his body’s advice on new physical limitations. The physical constraints of a banged-up, aging body required adjustments as obvious as that bright orange glove he wore on his throwing hand when winter arrived in Colorado. Recognition is an invaluable football skill. But recognition is only the first step. Nobody in the NFL adjusts better than Manning.

  “Getting to know the fans of Denver has added to my comfort level. When I came in here a year ago, I really didn’t have time to get to know Colorado very well, because I really had to immerse myself in learning everything I could about playing football for the Broncos,” Manning said.

  In the five-year period from 2008 through 2012, more than three million net jobs were lost in the United States. Manning fell prey to those grim statistics, another good American worker kicked to the curb. Of course, being an NFL quarterback does have its privileges. Manning never had to worry about putting food on the table. But as he sat and helplessly watched the Colts prepare for a future that did not include him, Manning did worry a job he loved might be gone forever.

  When a proud man gets knocked down, what can he do?

  The options are: (1) hide beneath the covers and wallow in the pain, or (2) get your sorry butt out of bed and move on to Plan B.

  Manning was John Elway’s first and only choice to return the franchise to championship glory.

  But truth be told: The Broncos were Manning’s Plan B.

  There is no Plan B? Without it, Manning would have never made Broncos Country his home.

  For an unabashed perfectionist, the plan all went perfectly for Manning until the final minute of the fourth quarter against Baltimore. On that day, you could smell trouble coming.

  In that stunning playoff loss, as the game grew older and the evening grew colder, it appeared the Broncos had lost their appetite for the fight. They began playing the odds rather than finishing off the Ravens. Safety Rahim Moore recognized the deep pass coming. But he adjusted too late. And the contest was over as soon as Manning took a knee with the score tied and 31 seconds remaining in the fourth quarter.

  No más.

  The look of surrender in players’ eyes was a sad sight Broncomaniacs never want to see again.

  “Just because you’ve watched a fight,” said Broncos coach John Fox, responding to my howls against his conservative fourth-quarter strategy, “doesn’t mean you know what it’s like to get hit.”

  Well, I know this: The battle goes on, even if you do not. There’s no safe place to hide in the NFL.

  From here on out, so long as Manning is the emcee rapping the audibles in Denver, there should only be one circumstance in which it is acceptable to take a knee: in a victory formation, when the crowd is counting down the seconds to the final gun. “We want our offense to dictate what the defense does and not react to what any other team is doing,” brilliant young Broncos assistant coach Adam Gase said.

  The Broncos found reasons to play angry in 2013.

  The Colts told Manning thanks for the memories, but get lost. Fox was fired in 2010 by the Carolina Panthers when ownership dismantled the roster and blamed a 2-14 record on the coach. After being burned for two long touchdowns by Baltimore receiver Torrey Smith in the loss to the Ravens, perennial Pro Bowl cornerback Champ Bailey heard disrespectful grousing from the cheap seats that it was time for him to move to safety, or maybe to a rocking chair on the porch.

  This was a team with a bag full of chips on its shoulders. Having failed once to win the Super Bowl with Manning, maybe what Denver discovered is that it does need a Plan B. Under the harsh light of self-evaluation, perhaps the Broncos found a new motto in the relentless pursuit of a championship: Never take a knee.

  “I know that John Elway wants to set kind of an attitude and an edge around here, maybe a little bit of an uncomfortable atmosphere, which I believe in,” Manning said.

  Never be satisfied. Never slow down. Never take a knee.

  In his first season as quarterback in Denver, Manning and the Broncos led the league in scoring, at 30 points per game. Impressive? Sure. But is it good enough? Not in the NFL of 2013, when defenses often appear defenseless.

  Pro football has entered a cycle where it is all crazy video-game numbers. During the quarterfinal round of the Super Bowl tournament, the Broncos scored 35 points. How could that not be good enough? The four winners who advanced to the conference finals did so by averaging in excess of 38 points.

  Any quarterback can throw for 300 yards in an afternoon. The new standard of excellence is 400 yards in a game. The NFL requires a new metric for measuring offensive success. The traditional charting of time of possession is as quaint as the old ticktock of a grandfather clock.

  What might be a more meaningful statistic for the NFL’s brave, new, wired world? Points per possession. During Manning’s first year in Denver, the Broncos scored 49 offensive touchdowns and 26 field goals on 190 regular-season drives. That averaged to 2.22 points per possession. Should Denver find a way to average 2.50 points per possession, defensive coordinators throughout the league would turn into grumpy insomniacs.

  But was it realistic to expect that Manning could somehow improve on his passer rating of 105.8, a number that suggested his debut with the Broncos was the second-best season of his brilliant career?

  “I think Peyton can keep getting better,” Elway said. “There’s no question.”

  Anything less than a championship is not good enough. Never take a knee.

  Although he wears clothes on the sideline that look as if they were retrieved from the bottom of the hamper, New England coach Bill Belichick marches one step ahead of the fashion curve. From 2010 to 2012, the go-go Patriots averaged 529 points per season. This is no time for the Broncos to slow down.

  “We’re going to try to play faster,” said Gase, promoted to offensive coordinator less than a week after the Broncos were eliminated from the playoffs. The Denver offense took 1,090 snaps in 2012. He sought to find a way to give Manning 100 more snaps a season.

  “We’re looking to go pedal to the metal and play as fast as possible and score as many points as possible every game,” said Gase, who thinks so fast there’s often no room for a comma, much less a breath, when he speaks.

  “I know this: We want as many plays on offense as we can possibly create. Because you know those guys on the other side of the field don’t want to see the football in the hands of Peyton Manning upwards of 80 plays a game, especially in Denver, at altitude. That’s the last thing a defense wants to see. As a defense, that will get in your gourd, man.”

  Take a knee? Never again.

  “I think we averaged 68 plays per game. And New England was number one with 75 plays per game,” said Manning, who knows the exact number of snaps he took in 2012, without having to peek at the stat sheet. “We can play faster. Any time you can put different types of pressure on the defense, that’s what you want to do. I think we have shown that we can play super fast or we can slow it down with a check audible at the line of scrimmage. Our offense plays better the faster we go. I think that’s clear-cut.”

  Welcome to the revolution. Entering his 16th NFL season, the last thing Manning wanted to do is pump the brakes. With the addition of Pro Bowl receiver Wes Welker to the offense, the football would
be flying fast and furious in an offense directed by Manning. “I don’t think it can ever be maxed out,” Gase said.

  Hurry! Hurry!

  On the road to the Super Bowl, there is no speed limit.

  As a player, Elway lost the Super Bowl three times, by an aggregate score of 136–40, before finally putting a big, happy squeeze on the Vince Lombardi Trophy at age 37. On the way to the Hall of Fame, even a quarterback on his A game gets sacked again and again and again.

  More telling, Elway lost his marriage to divorce, his sister to cancer, and his father to a heart attack before meeting a new wife and discovering a new purpose as the Broncos executive vice president of football operations. It inevitably happens to almost every man after his 40th birthday. Things you love begin to die. Going a little middle-age crazy is normal. Coming out the other side is tougher. It requires adjustment. It requires a Plan B.

  “As a player, all I wanted was the hope instilled by the people at the top of the organization. I wanted the hope they were going to give me the very best chance to compete and win a world championship,” Elway said.

  “When you have the genuine hope of competing for the Super Bowl, the level of play by everybody increases. It doesn’t guarantee we are going to win the Super Bowl. But if you have that hope, you play better, you enjoy the job more, the nicks and pains seem to heal quicker, and the hard work is not as hard.”

  As a quarterback, Elway only required a handful of seconds on the scoreboard clock to produce a miracle. As an executive, what Elway gives the Broncos is more than a prayer of winning a championship. He has issued an order: No dream will be deferred. When linebacker Von Miller was the first to guarantee Denver would win the Super Bowl in February 2014, it was all part of the plan, and it was in step with the swagger Elway gave back to the Broncos.

  The souvenirs from the 13-3 regular season that renewed this cocksure strain of hope in Denver could fill a trophy room. “When you take a year off from football, you come back for all the enjoyable moments,” Manning told Mike Klis of the Denver Post. In the quarterback’s photo album, here were the snapshots that jumped off the page:

  There was that river of orange, born before dawn from an outpouring of affection for a new football hero in town, as fathers, sons, and sisters lined up outside the gates of Dove Valley on the first day of training camp, many of them wearing a number 18 uniform.

  There was the laughter of the Transplant Club, a Friday-evening ritual on team road trips, when the grizzled veterans brought in by Elway sat down at the dinner table, broke bread, and swapped stories with Manning. The regular lineup was receiver Brandon Stokley, linebacker Keith Brooking, safety Jim Leonhard, and tight end Joe Dreesen. Five NFL vets, with 59 combined years of professional football scars among them. All the QB’s men.

  There was the roar of a city rising off the sofa in unison, in homes from Northglenn to Highlands Ranch, with a full-throat cheer for every step of the 65 yards Tony Carter traveled with a fumble recovery at San Diego, during the remarkable comeback against the Chargers that empowered this Denver team with the belief anything was possible.

  The were those giant, white, cutout letters—one M, one V and one P—that offered a salute to Manning, as he trotted into the huddle on a field where he slowly began to feel at home.

  “You can’t squeeze 14 years of memories and comfort of living in one place into three, four, five or however many years I’m going to be here in Colorado. But you try to do the best you can with the adjustment,” Manning told me before his first workout at the outset of his second season in Denver.

  “Now, I still want to keep that uncomfortable edge at work, because I think that helps you win. But there’s no question the upheaval of moving to a new town should not be as much of a burden as when I first got here. I’m more at home now. The fans of the Broncos have been great to me. Anything that can lighten the load and help me do my job better? It’s a real positive, and I’m grateful for that.”

  Not 48 hours after the sky fell on the Broncos in the playoffs and the city was reluctantly relearning how to smile, my cell phone began blowing up, buzzing with texts, all from the same person: John Hessler, former University of Colorado quarterback. Hess demanded we have lunch. He even offered to let me buy.

  At a burger joint in a strip mall on the north end of Denver, Hessler pulled his well-preserved 1997 edition of the Sporting News college football preview issue from its protective wrapper, to brag on his recently obtained autograph from Manning.

  “Have I shown you this yet?” Hessler asked.

  “Yes,” I replied, chuckling, “only about three times in the past month alone.”

  But the cherished signature from Manning was not the primary reason Hessler had excitedly fired off a half dozen text messages to set up this summit meeting.

  “Can you keep a secret?” said Hessler, after the restaurant proprietor slid our platters of food across the booth.

  He took a big, sloppy bite of his burger, and allowed me to chew on the question.

  After grabbing a fistful of sweet potato fries and letting the suspense build, Hessler finally spilled the beans.

  “I’m going to be a dad again!” announced Hessler, his voice so loud and proud that other customers turned toward him and grinned.

  A star CU player who fell so hard after his playing career was over that there once was a do-not-resuscitate notice taped to his fridge now had a whole new life to celebrate. “Can you believe it?” Hessler said. “After my car accident, the doctors told me I would never be able to have kids again, because of the medical procedures to put me back together.”

  Remember? Hessler was left for dead in the road, the victim of a hit-and-run accident in October 2003. Who would have thought that 10 years later, during the same week in August of his 39th birthday, Hessler could be pacing in the maternity ward, waiting for his wife, Sarah, to deliver a child?

  There was time when the last person who would have believed in that little miracle was Hessler himself.

  No Plan B?

  “Sooner or later, buddy, you’re going to need a Plan B,” Hessler said. “The trick is figuring out what you’re going to do after getting knocked on your ass.”

  Losing is not defeat. Defeat is surrendering the opportunity at a second chance. Never take a knee.

  “Being out of football for the 2011 season and not really knowing what the future held, and whether I was going to be able to play again, I certainly had a great appreciation for 2012 and being back on the field playing with my new teammates,” Manning said. “It was a new atmosphere for me, a totally different culture and a huge transition. But I did not take it for granted one single moment.”

  Anybody can love sports from the backseat of a convertible during the victory parade. But can you love the game when a team cuts you, or the playoffs end with a bitter loss in the bitter cold? Can you love football when it hurts, when it breaks your body or spits on your pride?

  What his 37 passing touchdowns and 4,659 throwing yards for the Broncos proved about Manning was not so much about what was left in his arm, but what always resided in his heart. As a quarterback who obsessively tries to calculate and control every variable on the football field, Manning understands the truth about his sport. It is not always pretty. But he loves the truth anyway. In football, nothing is guaranteed. For even the best team in the league, the chance of winning the Super Bowl in any given season is no better than a coin flip.

  Do not, however, tell Manning the odds are stacked against him. He plays to win. But that is not why he plays.

  “I know I like being in the arena. I like knocking on the door every year. The closer you get, the harder it is sometimes, when it doesn’t happen. I know what it feels like to win one, like John Elway has, and how it feels to lose one,” Manning told me way back in March 2012, on the afternoon he turned the page from Indianapolis, joined the Broncos, and began chapter 2 of his NFL life.

  Looking philosophical, the veteran quarterback reached for
the personal meaning of this second chance in Denver. He caught me leaning in for something profound, then knocked me out with a sucker punch line.

  It was absolutely perfect. And perfectly Manning.

  Picking an underappreciated quote from a beloved sports movie, Manning dryly noted, “It’s kind of like Ebby Calvin ‘Nuke’ LaLoosh said in Bull Durham: ‘I love winning. . . . It’s like, uh, you know, better than losing.’”

  Losing stinks. Life hurts. But quit? No way. The strong laugh in the face of failure.

  The real game begins with Plan B.

  And every great comeback starts with only one absolute rule:

  Never take a knee.

  Chapter 19

  Unfinished Business

  The Broncos had yet to make a tackle, throw a block, or sweat a drop in training camp for the 2013 NFL season. But it appeared their shot at winning the Super Bowl had gone up in smoke. Linebacker Von Miller, the team’s best defensive player, was in trouble with the league’s substance-abuse program.

  It was a sticky situation for Miller. Marijuana was big news in Colorado. The state’s citizens had passed Amendment 64 in a paradigm-breaking, headline-making vote that legalized personal use of the drug by adults throughout Colorado. My neighbor began smoking weed on the front porch. Wacky tabacky jokes flown in from across the country echoed in the Rocky Mountains. “In Colorado . . . voters approved a tax on marijuana to fund the building of schools,” Conan O’Brien explained to his television audience. “In other words, kids: Don’t do drugs, but stay in the schools funded by them.”

  Fair or not, who became the new poster child for this new Rocky Mountain high? Miller.

  George Atallah of the NFL players association wanted everybody to know that Miller’s case did not involve steroids. The Denver Post, however, received documentation that indicated Miller had multiple positive tests for marijuana and an undisclosed amphetamine dating back to his rookie season in 2011.