by Mark Kiszla
It was an afternoon for killing ghosts and burying bad memories. In the eyes of Broncomaniacs who wear the scars of tough setbacks for life, this was a must-win for coach John Fox, who could at long last be forgiven for taking a knee during the fourth quarter of that dreadful loss against Baltimore that abruptly ended the team’s Super Bowl dreams a year earlier, on the 12th day of 2013.
After hearing ad nauseam about how he had suffered elimination in the opening game of the postseason eight freaking times, Manning put in solid, blue-collar work against the Chargers, with a performance that should have been toasted with a beer and a shot rather than the popping of champagne corks.
There was zero glitz in the veteran quarterback’s 230 yards passing against San Diego. It was a friendly reminder that a “W” in the postseason never needs to be delivered in fancy wrapping paper. Asked about his legacy for the umpteenth time after the victory, Manning dryly replied: “What’s weighing on my mind is how soon I can get a Bud Light in my mouth.”
But the story of this victory was more than a sigh of relief. The most lasting sound from a day that made all of Colorado happy was the unbridled joy of a single two-year-old boy.
“Daddy! Daddy!” Marshall Manning screamed excitedly to the quarterback standing at the podium for his postgame press conference. The kid was wrapped in the arms of another famous quarterback, his grandpa Archie Manning.
A slow grin spread across the face of Peyton Manning. The maestro who controls everything at the line of scrimmage could not control this interruption in his formal discussion with dozens of media members, all in a hurry to file reports about Denver moving on down the road to the Super Bowl.
Here is what was so beautiful about the unscripted moment: Marshall Manning was too young to remember anything about that loss to Baltimore a year earlier. How could he? Marshall and his twin sister, Mosley, were born in March 2011. Toddlers do not keep a record of which NFL quarterback has the most championship rings on his fingers or the most MVP awards on the mantel. In the eyes of his children, Peyton Manning is just plain Daddy. Win or lose, being Daddy is all that is required to qualify him as their hero.
With a hint of regret and a trace of bitterness, Indianapolis Colts owner Jim Irsay had mouthed off during 2013 that the statistics produced by Manning are jaw-dropping Star Wars numbers. Irsay, however, added a bummer of a caveat: All the offensive fireworks, with the inherent dependency on a highly paid quarterback, make it harder to win championships in the salary-cap era, when roster payrolls are strictly regulated by the league’s financial rules.
But know what? Maybe Irsay has a valid point.
The mind-boggling numbers Manning posted during his second season in Denver boldly explored a dazzling new universe where no quarterback had ever gone before. While leading the Broncos to a 13-3 record and first place in the AFC West division, Manning threw for 5,447 yards and a league-record 55 touchdowns.
On the eve of the Super Bowl, he would be named Most Valuable Player for the fifth time in his brilliant career by near unanimous vote, finishing first on all except one of 50 ballots cast by a nationwide panel of 49 experts and a single knucklehead either too blind or too stubborn to recognize Manning’s greatness. Wayne Gretzky was named MVP nine times in hockey. The seven MVP awards of Barry Bonds sit under a cloud of suspicion from alleged use of performance-enhancing drugs. The NBA saluted Kareem Abdul-Jabbar six times as the most valuable player in basketball.
In football, Manning is king. He is MVPeyton. When Fox broadcaster Joe Buck was asked where Manning ranked on a list of the most impressive athletes he has had the pleasure of covering, Buck replied: “Number one.”
Manning showed the NFL something else beyond football greatness in 2013, something far more enduring and endearing. He peeled back the mask of his famously stern and serious Peyton Manning Face to show how vulnerable and soft the ultimate field general can be.
Yes, PFM cries. He allows himself a little smirk when taking vengeance. Dare we say it? The dude is human.
“I am not a robot,” Manning said.
Not a robot? Those might be the most revealing, myth-debunking words Manning has ever told me.
For years, the legend of Manning was carefully built by all of us in the media. He was an Iron Giant in shoulder pads. He was robotic in his film study. He brought X-ray vision to the line of scrimmage and unlimited storage of files containing every tiny weakness in a defense. And much of the myth was based in truth. Almost always, in public, Manning is as measured and as polished as a presidential candidate on the campaign trail.
But now we are supposed to believe there’s more on this brainiac’s mind than football? Behind the serious, demanding frown of Manning Face, there is really a regular guy who drinks beer and never misses an episode of Boardwalk Empire? We are supposed to believe PFM 2.0 is made of flesh and blood rather than computer circuitry?
Believe it.
A natural-born grinder whose infinite curiosity caused Archie Manning to long ago dub him The Riddler, the veteran Broncos quarterback did go home after games during Sundays in 2013 to watch video.
But the subject matter of the video that so engrossed Manning he could not take his eyes from the screen? It was not what you might think.
On Sunday nights in 2013, Manning turned off football and tuned in Enoch “Nucky” Thompson.
To chill out, the quarterback is an unabashed, can’t-get-enough fan of Boardwalk Empire, the HBO drama set during the Prohibition era that stars Steve Buscemi as the kingpin of Atlantic City, N.J.
“I was a Sopranos guy. I loved The Sopranos. I was devastated when that screen went blank (during the series’ last episode). I liked the ending, personally. But it was a tough moment, because I knew the series was over,” said Manning, who likes to veg in front of the television as much as any red-blooded American. “Sunday night is my night to watch a show. . . . So when Boardwalk came out, that was big for me.”
When Manning came to Denver after being fired by the Colts, there was no guarantee he would play in the Super Bowl again. All he wanted was the opportunity.
Well, to quote “Nucky” Thompson: “This is America, ain’t it? Who the fuck is stopping you?”
This might sound odd: When we celebrate Manning’s fifth MVP award, a toast should be raised to “Nucky.”
Why? It was a pain in the neck, but Manning finally learned to get out of his own way late in his brilliant NFL career. Yes, Manning still pounds away more relentlessly than a hammer and burns brighter than the sun. But he has also learned to relax. PFM can be a couch potato, without feeling guilty. And that’s a good thing.
We tend to draw our legendary athletes with the biggest, boldest colors in the crayon box to make it easy to distinguish heroes from villains.
The quick sketch of Manning is: Quarterback as automaton. You’ve read the comic book version. PFM is harder to solve than Chinese algebra during the regular season, only to see Mr. Smartypants blow a fuse with hyperactive over-analysis during the playoffs. He’s obsessive, compulsive, and maybe too uptight for his own good.
Manning acknowledges: That’s the robot he used to be.
“There was a time when I would come home from practice and I would stay up until 1 to 1:30 in the morning, because I had to watch all four of [an upcoming foe’s] preseason games that night. I thought that if I didn’t watch all four of those games, the world might come to an end the next day. I felt like I had to do it. I didn’t need to sleep as much, and I was a younger player,” Manning said. “My preparation has changed. I come home after practice, and I love spending time with the kids and putting them to bed. I don’t stay up as late. I need to get my rest more. Maybe I was a robot early on. I think now maybe I am a little more human.”
As long as he had to relearn how to throw a spiral again before joining the Broncos, Manning figured: Why let the reinvention end with his playing style? Manning dialed back the intensity and dialed up the goofiness in his personality. It wasn’t a big stretch. The
teacher’s pet always had a mischievous alter ego; teammates well know PFM is an unrepentant practical joker.
“No one’s more intense than Peyton when we’re in a team meeting or at practice. But nobody’s more of a prankster when we’re done working,” Denver tight end Jacob Tamme said. “I shouldn’t tell you this, because Peyton will get mad at me if I let the word get out. But I will give you a clue: If he offers you sunscreen on the golf course, don’t take it. When you put it on your body, it will not protect you from the sun. It will actually make you feel as if your body is on fire.”
That’s not sunscreen, it’s icy-hot muscle balm that Manning carefully and deviously injected into the tube.
Maybe the real kick of watching Manning at age 37 was observing a very buttoned-down quarterback let down his hair a little, before male pattern baldness begins in earnest.
“I think you get better at everything, hopefully, with age. Even in college, there was always misinformation. They used to say that I would stay up after the college game on Saturday night to watch the film of the game. The truth was that the replay of the game on TV would come on about 2 a.m., just as I was coming in with my teammates after a postgame celebration. I thought I was a normal college football player, a college student-athlete, who, after a game, went out and enjoyed it. I was lucky enough that the broadcast was on, and I got to stay up and watch it. I wasn’t studying the game film on Saturday night,” Manning told me, as he sat on a cruise ship docked in the Hudson River during the final week of January 2014. It was an absurd location to conduct an interview, but it somehow fit perfectly with the crazy hype of press coverage during Super Bowl week. Manning was relaxed, quick with a joke, at peace. His body language shouted: Man, this has been one strange and wonderful trip.
“At 37 years old, and in my 16th season . . . I think it’s healthy to take some time to reflect and smell the roses. The legacy question keeps popping up, and I guess I had a little more time to think about it. If I had my choice what my legacy would be, it would be I played my butt off for every team I ever played on, I was a really good teammate, and I did everything I could to win. Whatever else comes along in that time is fine with me.”
A great paradox of the human condition is how a man’s strength can also be his weakness.
If anything, maybe the young and earnest Manning cared too much about football.
Long ago, he mastered the quarterback’s art.
But the real secret of being Manning is his insatiable desire to expand his knowledge.
At age 37, before his legs give out and he is finally forced to surrender to the gravity that slows down every guy in middle age, Manning has learned to dance as if nobody is watching.
The NFL has never seen Manning play quarterback more precisely than he did during his 16th professional season. But here is what might have been more remarkable: The NFL has never seen Manning play quarterback with so much emotion.
Manning had begun The Unfinished Business Tour by dubstepping all over the Baltimore Ravens on September 5, 2013. As a writer with a freshly printed hardcover book on Manning and the Broncos to promote, I did radio interviews nonstop around the clock in the days leading up to the NFL season-opener.
On airwaves across the country, from Washington, D.C., to the state of Washington, I uttered the same bold prediction with a sound bite that could certainly come back to bite me. Why did I do it? I believed John Elway’s promise that Manning would be a better quarterback in his second year with the Broncos, and I knew the plan of new offensive coordinator Adam Gase to crank up the pace of the team’s snap count. So I made talk-show hosts from coast to coast scoff by predicting: “You know the record of 50 touchdown passes that New England quarterback Tom Brady set in 2007? That record is going down. Manning is going to break it.”
The tone for the most spectacular statistical season of Manning’s career was set on opening night. The Baltimore Ravens never knew what hit them. During a resounding 49–27 Denver victory, Manning slammed the defending Super Bowl champions with seven—count ’em, seven—touchdown passes. “It didn’t seem like that many,” said Wes Welker, who caught took two of Manning’s throws to the end zone. “You were just sitting there like, ‘That was really seven?’ because he’s so nonchalant about it.”
From Day 1 of the season, the Broncos put the league on notice of the two working themes for this team: (1) Never take a knee, and (2) Pedal to the metal.
With almost ruthless efficiency, Manning relentlessly drove Denver until the Broncos became the first NFL offense to score 600 points in a season. But he also showed a little piece of his heart when returning to Indianapolis to play a game in Lucas Oil Stadium, the house he built.
On October 20, as thousands of longtime fans dressed in his old blue-and-white Colts jerseys stood and cheered before kickoff, Manning removed his helmet, peered into the crowd and tapped his chest. It was a messy divorce with the Colts. But time heals. The quarterback wanted fans to know the love from Indianapolis will always be a part of him. He let the applause echo in his heart. “It will be something I always remember,” Manning said.
When the forecast for Colorado on December 8 called for frigid temperatures only a polar bear could love, the narrative that Manning suffers from brain freeze and a squeaky arm in the cold got the Broncos hot and bothered. “The thing that pisses me off the most [about the criticism] is that I don’t want anyone else as my quarterback,” said Gase, the assistant coach who works closest with Manning when installing the offensive game plan.
Manning conducts himself with class. But doubt him, and he does a slow burn. Manning does not get mad. He gets even. As the thermometer struggled to stay above 15 degrees, Manning torched the Tennessee Titans, completing 39 of 59 passes for 397 yards and four touchdowns in a 51–28 victory. The quarterback then poured a little bile and served it cold to critics who suggested he cannot operate in the cold. “Whoever wrote that narrative,” Manning said in an exclusive interview with KOA radio, “can shove that one where the sun don’t shine.”
Manning loves the history of sports in America. He memorizes names and years and records with the same enthusiasm he brings to learning the game plan. Maybe that explains why Manning especially cherished one award in 2013, even if that award has grown a little old and creaky, kind of like the quarterback himself.
During the age of cable television and the Internet, the diminished influence of Sports Illustrated is as obvious as the shrinking number of pages in the weekly magazine. But Manning knows track star Roger Bannister was the magazine’s first Sportsman of the Year, way back in 1954. So the quarterback was genuinely humbled to be honored in December, during the 60th anniversary of an award that has gone to legends as varied as Muhammad Ali and Billie Jean King.
At a dinner in Denver to celebrate his selection, Manning cracked wise, with self-deprecating jokes about career triumphs and failures chronicled by Sports Illustrated. Then, he told the story about being asked to pose for the cover when he was the quarterback for the University of Tennessee in 1996. The clever photographer asked young Manning to lean against a giant cardboard replica of an SI cover from 36 years earlier, featuring a Mississippi quarterback named Archie Manning cocking his arm to fire a pass.
“For a moment in time, my Dad and I got to be college football players together,” a suddenly sentimental Manning confessed to the hand-picked audience of special friends invited to the ceremony in the team’s locker room. “I think only Sports Illustrated could have accomplished something like that. It was something very special. . . .”
The voice of Manning cracked. The quarterback dropped his head, fighting back tears.
Even robots cry.
No NFL player has ever been more dominant at 37 years old than Peyton Manning was in 2013. So how much longer can he beat everybody, including Father Time? As winter melts into spring during the rest of his career, Manning will take a medical exam and carefully listen to what doctors might discover about the structural integrity of his
surgically repaired neck, then decide if he will play another year for the Broncos.
“My brother Cooper dealt with neck surgeries and injuries as a high school and college player, and he had to give up football. That made a big impact on my life,” Manning said.
“I remember at the time, when Cooper got injured, they did a test on me and Eli. I would have been a junior in high school and Eli would have been a sixth grader. They said our necks weren’t picture perfect and didn’t look ideal, but they’re stable enough to keep playing football. Cooper had to give up playing football. In some ways, when I had my neck problems [with Indianapolis], I thought maybe I had been on borrowed time this entire time. I was fortunate to have 20 years of health to play football. If that was going to be the end of it because of a neck injury, I really—believe it or not—had a peace about it.”
Written in orange and blue, chapter 2 of his NFL career has often read like a fairy tale. Manning could walk away at any point wearing a big smile, carrying not a single ounce of regret into retirement.
But here’s a guess why Denver’s franchise player is in no hurry to leave the huddle and go sit on the porch: At two years old, Marshall Manning has yet to develop any clear picture or sustainable memory of his Daddy as a quarterback.
His five-year contract with the Broncos runs through the 2016 season. By late 2016, Marshall and Mosley Manning will be old enough to read Daddy’s name in the newspaper after he has lit up the scoreboard with touchdown passes on Sunday.
Think that could be a powerful motivation for Manning to keep playing football? A man’s real legacy is the memories and dreams he instills in his children.
After everything one of the most accomplished players in NFL history has achieved, there is at least one more important and true thing No. 18 can do in football: Daddy can walk off the field, hand-in-hand with his kids, framed by a photograph guaranteed never to fade in the memory, a lasting image that defines three generations in America’s first family of quarterbacks.