by Mark Kiszla
But maybe this was the most amazing statistic of all: During a championship season that saw the Broncos win a dozen times during the regular season and three more times during the playoffs, their record in games decided by seven points or less was 11-3. In the history of the NFL, no team had ever won 11 games decided by no more than a touchdown during a single season until this Denver defense, which stood tallest with its back to the wall.
Maybe Manning said it best: “I’m glad I am on the same team as that defense and don’t have to play against them.”
Chapter 23
From Zero to Hero
The date was November 15, 2015, and it will forever live in infamy for Peyton Manning. It was a day when football mocked him and foes began to feel sorry for him. At one point during a disheartening 29–13 loss to the Kansas City Chiefs, I felt so embarrassed and hurt for the helpless, 39-year-old quarterback that I stood up in the press box, turned my head and whispered a prayer after Manning threw yet another interception: “Please, get him out of there.”
The impossible had happened. On the stat sheet, next to Manning’s name, was his quarterback rating. It read: 0.0. One of the greatest players in NFL history had been transformed into the football equivalent of Bluto Blutarsky, pencils stuck up his nose, earning a grade so low it even shamed Animal House.
November 15 was the first time football shouted at Manning it was time for him to get the hell out. It was his 265th regular-season start as an NFL quarterback, and it proved to be his most humiliating game as a pro. The crowd booed his team as he trotted off to the locker room at halftime. He was benched in the third quarter by coach Gary Kubiak, who made a stunning admission after the shockingly lopsided defeat. “I am disappointed in myself. This one is on me,” Kubiak said. “I should have probably made the decision not to play Manning.”
And that was the stinking truth. With a painfully injured left foot and a dead right arm, Manning looked washed up, after completing only five of 20 passes for a pitiful 35 yards against the Chiefs.
This was not how a Hall of Fame career was supposed to end. At age 39, Manning found himself trapped in a Kevin Costner sports movie. You know the plot: Lovable old player, hanging on, defiantly spitting in the eye of Father Time. The only trouble is it often works better in a Hollywood script than on a football field.
November 15 had been circled in on the calendar as a day of celebration in Broncos Country. With the sky a carefree shade of blue and the temperature of 64 degrees tailor-made for orange T-shirts, it was a perfect football Sunday in Colorado. What could possibly go wrong?
A giddy buzz filled the stadium, with Broncomaniacs certain a victory against Kansas City would all but clinch the AFC West title, making a postseason berth for Denver a foregone conclusion nearly two weeks prior to Thanksgiving. Among the crowd of 76,973 in Sports Authority Field at Mile High was Joe Horrigan, dispatched from Canton, Ohio, on a happy mission from the Pro Football Hall of Fame. “We have enough items for a whole Peyton Manning wing in the building,” he said. But Horrigan, the affable Hall monitor, was back in Denver to collect one more souvenir from the quarterback’s brilliant career.
With his first completion against the Chiefs, Manning would break Brett Favre’s record of 71,838 passing yards, and Horrigan wanted the game ball. It would be one more way to measure greatness. Think of it this way: The ground covered by Manning’s throws had stretched nearly 41 miles, greater than the distance, as the crow flies, from downtown Denver to the peak of 14,271 feet tall Mount Evans.
November 15, however, turned out to be a celebration cursed from the start. From his first pass, intercepted by Kansas City cornerback Marcus Peters to set up an easy touchdown for the Chiefs, something was terribly amiss with Manning, who appeared afraid to throw. He did bag the career-yardage record in the opening quarter, on a 4-yard catch by running back Ronnie Hillman. The game was halted briefly to salute Manning’s accomplishment. He waved to the crowd with a smile that looked more like a grimace. It was an awkward moment, about to turn into unmitigated agony.
“I didn’t play well, I had a bad game. Not much else you can say about that,” said Manning, after being benched with Denver trailing
22–0. “Whether it was because of my injuries or my poor-decision making, I tend to lean on the poor decision-making and some bad throws.”
His worst decision? Choosing to play hurt. By doing so, Manning hurt any chance Denver had of beating the Chiefs.
The date was November 15, and it’s no exaggeration to suggest it could have been the day the Denver dream of a championship died. As stunned players trudged off the field after the 16-point loss to Kansas City, they clung to the solace of still being in first place of the AFC West standings. But momentum in the NFL can flip in a heartbeat, and the Broncos not only had lost two games in a row, nobody knew when—or if—Manning, hobbled by a partially torn plantar fascia near his left heel, could return to the lineup again. The starting quarterback job fell on the unproven shoulders of Brock Osweiler, who had started zero times and thrown only 30 passes since being drafted in 2012.
In back-to-back defeats, that cocksure attitude of Denver’s outstanding defense was also rocked by surrendering a total of 56 points. The swagger in the locker room had vanished. The Broncos were suddenly tip-toeing toward an uncertain future, peeking with trepidation around the corner. “You can’t panic. You can’t say, ‘Oh, this is the end of our season.’ No way,” Denver defensive end Antonio Smith said. “But I’ve seen that one loss give you three or four more, before you can say ‘Wait a minute!’ and hit the restart button.”
As the sun set on November 15, the Broncos were a team in crisis. Despite a 7-2 record, Denver appeared to be more of a threat to miss the playoffs than make a serious run at the Super Bowl.
In the end, football can be cruel to its legends. Rather than a blaze of glory, Hall of Fame quarterback Dan Marino went down in the flames of a 62–7 playoff defeat during his final NFL game, while New York Jets icon Joe Namath limped away on gimpy knees, throwing four interceptions as quarterback for the Los Angeles Rams during his farewell performance. Rather than chasing a championship, would Manning’s time in Denver end with him plopping his broken-down body on the Broncos bench? Those who loved him lost sleep, worried sick that he would hobble into retirement on an injured foot.
“I wasn’t sure he was going to play again,” admitted Archie Manning, the famous quarterback’s famous father. “I even talked to my wife about it. Told her: ‘Peyton might be done. . . . He might not play football again.’ That thing, that foot, was killing him.”
On his final snap before being yanked from the Kansas City game, Manning threw his fourth interception on an embarrassing afternoon. The last pick was nabbed by Chiefs safety Ron Parker, who damned Manning with faint praise. “That’s him. He’s getting pretty old,” Parker said. “He’s still a good quarterback. He tried hard.”
He tried hard? In the view of Parker, a Hall of Fame quarterback had been reduced to three lousy, condescending words, and those patronizing words read like an obituary for Manning’s brilliant 18-year NFL career.
But, as doubters threw dirt on Manning, there was this ray of optimism offered by his coach. “Peyton is our quarterback,” Kubiak insisted after the loss to Kansas City. “If he’s healthy and ready to go, Peyton’s our quarterback.”
At the time, it sounded to me like a dreaded, hollow vote of confidence for Manning, suffering through by far the worst season as a pro. But, in reality, it was an expression of faith more valuable than all the money in the Denver Mint. When the league was ready to bury its five-time MVP, Manning had a friend in Kubiak.
And what happened next was the most amazing comeback ever staged by Manning. What happened next is the story of an old quarterback, his skills diminished by injury and eroded by age, uncertain if he had anything left in his throwing arm, defiantly pushing the sun back up in the sky one more time, just long enough to get back in the Denver huddle, because, for the love of t
he game, there’s no quit in Manning.
Damn, it was a Costner movie.
“We were nine weeks into the season, we were 7-2, we had a rough day against Kansas City,” Kubiak said. “I knew (Manning) wasn’t feeling good. I knew his foot was hurting. We went in my office and I said, ‘You’re going to get well.’”
Hand me a chisel and ask for my Mount Rushmore of quarterbacks, and I will gladly carve out a larger-than-life tribute to Joe Montana, Otto Graham, Johnny Unitas and Manning. But Kubiak had the stones to tell one of the greatest quarterbacks who ever lived to stay away from the Denver huddle until he was healthy enough to help the Broncos.
“He was not real happy with that, not real happy,” Kubiak said.
During Manning’s final NFL season, the Broncos scored 422 points in 19 games from a narrow victory against Baltimore in September through the Super Bowl upset of Carolina in February. But nothing counted more toward the championship than that difficult conversation behind closed doors between an injured quarterback and a coach scrambling to prevent his team from falling apart. In times of big trouble, it’s the shared vulnerability of two proud men that can pull them through a crisis.
What did Kubiak tell Manning at the most crucial juncture of Denver’s season?
“He told me: ‘I got you,’” Manning said. “And I trusted him.”
Coaches defined by X’s and O’s can draw up fantastic plays, but only a coach with the guts and heart to administer tough love can draw the best out of his players.
While the Broncos got down to business of nailing down their fifth-straight division championship, Manning began a tedious slog to beat the clock, with each hour of rehabilitation passing slowly, while at the same time, the weeks remaining on the regular-season schedule flew by way too fast for a quarterback anxious to get back in the huddle.
So not to be a distraction, Manning practiced on his own, away from teammates, on the artificial turf in the Pat Bowlen Fieldhouse with a motley crew that included practice squad receiver Jordan “Sunshine” Taylor, equipment managers Chris Valenti and Mike Harrington, plus injured rookie tight end Jeff Heuerman, shelved for the season after tearing the anterior cruciate ligament in his left knee in May. Like a rat in a scientific study, every step of Manning’s recovery was recorded by a camera for analysis by Kubiak.
“I’d be lying if I sat here and told you it was not a frustrating time,” Manning admitted. Then, with humor as distinctive as the Tennessee whiskey that made Jack Daniel’s famous for smoothness and its mule-kick finish, Manning described being an outcast at Broncos headquarters for more than a month, when the injured quarterback was barely seen and rarely heard outside of the one team meeting each morning.
As Demaryius Thomas and Von Miller gathered with position coaches and went off to practice, “I go over in a little quarantined sandbox in the far corner,” said Manning, with a heavy pour of 90 proof sarcasm. “It was nice of them to give me a practice-squad receiver, an equipment guy and a guy on injured reserve to throw to. That really helped. I really appreciated it.”
In Manning’s absence, the Broncos won three straight games, including a 30–24 overtime victory against New England, which saw Osweiler became an instant folk hero in Colorado during his second NFL start, by sending Tom Brady and the Patriots to their first loss of the season. It seemed too good to be true. And it was. Osweiler proved to be very human; his inexperience under center began to show. Oh, there was no shame and little real surprise in consecutive setbacks against the young, improving Oakland Raiders and the offensively explosive Pittsburgh Steelers in December. But, with a 10-4 record, Denver suddenly found itself in real danger of becoming the first team in NFL history to miss the playoffs after winning 10 of its opening dozen games.
In Pittsburgh, Osweiler and his teammates blew a 14-point lead at halftime, went scoreless during the final 30 minutes and lost 34–27. In the visiting locker room at Heinz Field, the disheartened Broncos were reeling. “Gary called the team together and bared his soul. He said: ‘Guys, are you in with me or not?’ It was part anger, part emotion, part frustration, but a huge part passion,” said team president Joe Ellis, who witnessed the coach’s post-game speech. “He was putting everything he had into this (season) and he wanted his players to join him.”
Desperate to halt the team’s slide, it was understandable why Kubiak had renewed urgency to gauge Manning’s progress as the quarterback threw to his motley crew on Christmas Eve.
“During the workout, he sent me a signal on the film,” Kubiak said.
As anybody who has watched Manning conduct his business at the line of scrimmage knows, he can communicate an encyclopedia of football knowledge with a simple wave of his hand. So what not-so-subtle message was Manning trying to convey to his coach with one extension of a single finger?
“‘Hey, we’re No. 1.’ You could take it that way,” said Kubiak, suppressing the urge to laugh at the memory of Manning flipping him the bird. “I took it as, ‘I’m ready to play, Coach.’”
With one profanely defiant gesture, Manning revealed more about himself than the guy America thinks it knows from him singing endearingly off-key about chicken parm tasting so good in television commercials for Nationwide Insurance. Yes, Manning is a good guy. He does write thank-you notes to players when they retire from the NFL and his foundation has helped at-risk youth through grants in excess of $10 million. Those random acts of kindness are real and genuine.
The Manning I came to know during his four years in Denver, however, was also a ruthless competitor. If there’s one shared trait among transcendent athletes, from Michael Jordan to Serena Williams, it’s a relentlessly unhealthy obsession with not only beating any person or thing standing in the way, but crushing the obstacle. The magic of Manning is in hiding this addiction to winning with charm and grace.
The rap on Manning has always been he was a prisoner of his statistics and a choke artist in the clutch. I don’t buy it. Manning would not have persevered through the chronic pain in his foot and the embarrassment of being the 34th ranked quarterback in a 32-team league during his final season without a deep-seeded need to succeed. He swallowed his pride after getting benched and finally embraced the idea of being a game manager of Kubiak’s run-heavy offensive system for the singular purpose of earning that Super Bowl ring he came to Denver for in the first place.
During the final week of December 2015, Kubiak instructed Manning to assemble with his tiny practice crew at the team’s indoor facility for a 9 o’clock workout, so the coach could have a firsthand inspection of how far his quarterback had progressed in rehabilitation. By the time Kubiak arrived, however, the passing drills were done and Manning was ready to send his training partners to the showers.
In a small act of insubordination, Manning had intentionally started 60 minutes early. After 18 years in the NFL, he was done auditioning for the role of quarterback. When Kubiak demanded an explanation, Manning cut off his boss with a direct statement: “I’m ready to play.”
A control freak might have freaked out in response to Manning’s outburst. Instead of going berserk, Kubiak patiently listened for 25 minutes as Manning stated his case for being issued a uniform on game day for the first time since he was benched against Kansas City.
All Manning wanted for Christmas was a chance. Call it luck. Call it fate. But don’t forget to call re-write for a comeback story that grew juicier after Osweiler and the Broncos escaped with a 20–17 victory against Cincinnati on December 28, when Brandon McManus atoned for a field goal he badly hooked at the end of regulation with a 37-yard kick that split the uprights to win the game in overtime. The wildly changing, unpredictable trajectory of Denver’s fortunes was about to get so weird it could make Stephen Hawking quit looking for a logical explanation and order a pizza.
On the first Sunday of the New Year, the Patriots inexplicably attempted to win their final regular-season game in Miami without really trying to do anything on offense except to keep Brady healthy for
the playoffs, and lost 20–10 to the Dolphins during a totally unforeseen meltdown in Florida. Thanks, Flipper. It was a gift that kept on giving. All the Broncos had to do in order to secure the No. 1 seed in the AFC and home-field advantage in the playoffs was beat San Diego, which entered Sports Authority Field at Mile High with a 4-11 record and no real motivation to put up much of a fight.
Can you say quarterback controversy? Despite the 4-2 record compiled by Osweiler as the emergency starter at quarterback, he was victimized by five Denver turnovers that left him fussing with the coaching staff early in the San Diego game. His ineffectiveness moving the ball against the Chargers incited a nervous home crowd to beg for something, anything that could give the Broncos a spark.
At precisely 4:27 p.m. on a chilly afternoon, with Denver trailing 13–7 in the third quarter, Manning discarded his parka and entered the Broncos huddle to a standing ovation that instantly chased all the darkness from the stadium. Maybe the old quarterback still had the strength in his arm to push the sun back up in the sky.
“I heard the crowd go wild. I turned around, and that’s when I saw Peyton running on the field,” said Smith, who was sitting on the Denver bench with his defensive teammates. “That energy was exactly what we needed, exactly when we needed it. People don’t like to talk about stuff like that, because there ain’t no way to gauge it, ain’t no way to prove it to be true. But it is what it is. You could just feel the energy change, the shift. And the rest was history.”
Manning, often accused of being a robot fully loaded with artificial intelligence but devoid of blood and guts, led a comeback by stirring every soul in the stadium. His arm was not particularly impressive, as he passed for only nine times for 69 yards against the Chargers. But his spirit was the stuff that ignited four scoring drives, including a 23-yard scamper to the end zone by Ronnie Hillman that proved to be the difference in a 27–20 victory.