Peyton Manning

by Mark Kiszla

  The reports of the slow football death for Mr. Noodle Arm were not only premature, but greatly exaggerated. The interceptions Manning threw against the Falcons were to his right. That was supposed to be his good side, was it not? Or were analysts unable to tell their left from their right, while grasping for theories out of thin air, unable to find an insightful assessment with both hands?

  “When I see the ball coming out of his hand, what I see is a little wobble on it. That’s not what you want to see. We like to see that thing spinning really nice, tight on a spiral,” former Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Ron Jaworski observed on ESPN’s SportsCenter, after a loss to Houston dropped the Broncos’ record to 1-2.

  The complaint was Manning could not throw a football that looked as pretty in flight as the passes zinged by Green Bay’s Aaron Rodgers or Detroit’s Matthew Stafford. Well, meaning no disrespect, but neither could “Jaws” in his prime.

  Manning was declared done as a deep threat. This Hall of Fame quarterback, it was openly feared, had been reduced to an expensive game manager.

  Well, surprise, surprise, surprise.

  Six weeks after being declared toast, Manning was sweeter than a tall stack, covered in syrupy praise as the leading candidate for most valuable player, along with Minnesota running back Adrian Peterson.

  The scope of what Manning dealt with, both mentally and physically, in returning to the loftiest level of NFL stardom after a serious injury was best described by Marshall Faulk, the main event in “The Greatest Show on Turf” with the St. Louis Rams.

  “You’re never going to be perfect again. You’re only going to be repaired,” said Faulk, a running back enshrined in Canton, Ohio, during the summer of 2011.

  As a player finally forced to retire after gaining nearly 20,000 yards from scrimmage as a dual threat running or catching the football, Faulk can give a peek inside the head of an athlete whose confidence has been shaken by a serious injury. The fear is not of pain. The real fear is the fear of failure, born of the body’s betrayal.

  “For Peyton, I’m sure by far the biggest thing was the unknown. He didn’t know how his body was going to react. That has to be the biggest fear. As a football player, your body is your precise gauge of how you react to every situation in the game. You don’t get to put a test dummy out there on the field in your place, and say: ‘How does that feel?’ It’s trial-and-error with your own body, under the stress of a game,” Faulk said.

  “Mentally, it has to be both scary and frustrating. At any point in time, in the middle of a play, as you’re looking downfield and throwing the football, your body can let you down. Or it can surprise you, where you say, ‘Whoa, I didn’t know I still had that in me. How did I make that throw?’ It’s like flying an airplane with no gauges.”

  Barack Obama won his second term as president of the United States in November, not only beating rival Mitt Romney, but trouncing the Republican challenger 332–206 in the Electoral College tally, by a margin that surprised many prognosticators who had called the contest a toss-up.

  Whether the football is political or pigskin, it is all a game. Except football makes for melodrama for a couch potato to enjoy with his chips and salsa, and the race for MVP was no exception. There were two worthy candidates as the top NFL player of 2012, igniting a hot debate among their supporters.

  On a surgically repaired knee, Peterson was not only carrying Minnesota to a berth in the NFC playoffs, he was taking dead aim at the single-season rushing record of 2,106 yards, a feat still standing 28 years after Eric Dickerson established it, way back when the Rams called Los Angeles home.

  But week after week, as the Broncos dispatched foe after foe, Manning certainly looked like the best player on the field. After the Broncos routed Cleveland for their 10th consecutive victory, Browns defensive end Frostee Rucker endorsed the candidate from Colorado, declaring, “We played the best quarterback in the league.”

  So two days before Christmas, near the conclusion of a 16-game regular season that reminded him that the best gift really is health, Manning was asked if a stack of 300-yard passing games convinced him he was playing as well as in his Hall of Fame prime.

  “I don’t,” said Manning, lining me up squarely in the scope of his earnest eyes. Then, to underscore the certainty of his response, he repeated: “I do not.”

  It was a startling admission from a leading MVP contender.

  But was Manning telling the whole truth, or was he merely downplaying his remarkable achievements with false modesty? I leaned toward the latter explanation, because Mr. Noodle Arm compiled gaudy statistics that Tom Brady or Rodgers would take in a heartbeat. Certainly when he looked in the mirror, Manning had to recognize a quarterback the equal of the superstar who won his fourth MVP award in 2009.

  “I don’t.” Manning insisted. “I’m trying to be as good as I possibly can be at this state: A 36-year-old quarterback, coming off a year and a half, playing with a new team. I’m trying to be as good as I possibly can be in this scenario.”

  At the risk of incurring the veteran quarterback’s wrath, I called B.S. on Manning.

  “I know you guys don’t believe me when I say I’m still kind of learning about myself physically and what I can do. It’s still the truth,” Manning said, with grace so pure its source could have only been genuine humility.

  “I still have things that are harder than they used to be and things that I continue to have to work on, from a rehab standpoint to a strength standpoint. And that’s just the way it is and maybe that’s the way it’s going to be from here on out for me. I don’t know.”

  Flying without any gauges, Manning operated against the most basic fear in us all: the unknown. And that, more than anything, was the triumph of No Plan B. If reinventing himself as a quarterback did not work, there was going to be no way for Manning to fake it.

  The return of Manning and the rebirth of his career in Denver were shot nonstop through different lenses, all searching for fresh angles. It was Manning versus Andrew Luck, the QB who replaced him in Indianapolis. It was Manning versus Baltimore linebacker Ray Lewis, two grizzled warriors who stared at each other across the line of scrimmage, the intensity in their eyes matched only by the respect. It was Manning versus Philip Rivers, to see if the best quarterback in the AFC West was now in Denver rather than San Diego. It was Manning versus Peterson, waging a campaign for MVP.

  It was all good theater. But it all seemed a little contrived. Perfectionists measure themselves only against the guy in the mirror. And what Manning saw in the mirror was a middle-aged dude with a hint of a middle-aged paunch and a middle-aged hairline, left to wonder if what he had left was good enough to win.

  The comb-over that hides a man’s inevitable concessions to age is humor. During week 15 of the NFL season, with rain in the forecast for a game at Baltimore, Manning experimented wearing a glove on his throwing hand during practice. At midweek, he was asked: Could a quarterback whose NFL home was a dome until moving to Denver be concerned about the forecast of wet weather? “Who’s giving that weather report on Wednesday? Denver local weather? National weather? You?” Manning cracked. “Do you dabble in the meteorology field?”

  He did not wear the glove against the Ravens. Manning, obsessed with preparation, was practicing for winter. No lie: This is a man who would stick his right hand in a cold tub of ice to prepare for freezing conditions. He broke out the gaudy orange glove for the final two games of the regular season, and completed 53 of 72 passes for 643 yards and six touchdowns. Manning loved the glove, and he was not trying to make a fashion statement.

  The glove Manning donned for the first time in his NFL career was the ultimate tell. Touch, not velocity, touch was the real issue with Manning’s return to health. “I was surprised to see it. Because you just don’t see quarterbacks wear gloves,” Broncos cornerback Champ Bailey told Mike Klis of the Denver Post. “But honestly, the way he’s throwing it? I wouldn’t be surprised if we do start seeing more of it. I know when I�
�m just throwing the ball around, I throw better with a glove on.”

  The glove gave Manning a stronger grip, but it also let it slip that the regeneration of nerves after four neck surgeries was not complete. In his 15th professional season, a superstar practiced the theory of evolution, adapted and learned to love the glove. “I certainly don’t think I would have had to wear the glove had I not been injured,” Manning said. “It’s part of my injury, some things that I’ve had to adjust.”

  The biggest adjustment for any athlete who must confront the signs of athletic mortality is to ignore the bitter taste that often accompanies pride being swallowed.

  At the Manning Passing Academy his family holds every summer, there were teenagers with more zip on throws. In the weight room at Dove Valley, rookie Broncos quarterback Brock Osweiler pumped iron with such authority that it made Manning feel old. But here was the tricky part for Manning: Deep down inside, he slowly had to accept compromise, a tough deal cut with the realities of a right arm that ain’t what it used to be. “You’ve got to fight carrying that burden,” Manning said.

  Fair or not, the curse of Mr. Noodle Arm lives.

  Manning will have to live with the doubts until he can erase the memory of his last critical error in the 38–35 double-overtime loss to Baltimore in the playoffs.

  The last pass he threw that really mattered for the Broncos was an interception, and a stark reminder that the hero who led the Colts to a Super Bowl victory in 2007 is just a quarterback that Manning used to know. “When you play a game where the temperature is 10 degrees, that chronic injury is going to be affected by the cold,” Faulk said.

  Late in the first overtime of the playoff game against Baltimore, Manning rolled to his right and threw across his body. Manning might not particularly like playing in the cold, but the problem here was brain freeze.

  The pass never reached its intended target, Broncos receiver Brandon Stokley. It lacked the velocity to get past Ravens cornerback Corey Graham, whose interception set up Baltimore’s game-winning field goal from 47 yards.

  “Bad throw. Probably the decision wasn’t great,” Manning said. “I think I had an opening, and I didn’t get enough on it. I was trying to make a play and it’s certainly a throw I’d like to have back.”

  The bummer of the deal is also the compelling challenge of solving a mystery. At age 36, the challenge every morning for Manning is for an old dog to figure out a new way to trick ’em.

  “Old dog is right,” Manning told me. We have all heard that song by the Rolling Stones on classic-rock radio. What a drag it is getting old.

  But what you gonna do? Go sit on the porch? Or run with the pups, as long and far as you can?

  “An old dog,” said Manning, long in the tooth, but able to muster a bemused smile at the folly that age eventually makes of every man’s ego. “That’s for sure.”

  Chapter 6

  The Day Tebowmania Died

  Sacking God’s quarterback is an unforgivable sin, at least in the eyes of his most devout followers. Denver traded Tebow to the New York Jets on March 21, 2012, receiving two draft choices and $2.5 million in cash. From listening to the righteous rage of Tebowmaniacs, however, you would have thought Elway had sent God’s quarterback straight to hell.

  Dr. Pat Robertson—octogenarian televangelist, a first lieutenant in the Christian Right army and unabashed fan of Tebow—ran for president of the United States in 1988. So, in the aftermath of the Tebow trade, maybe it should have come as little surprise that Robertson was not hesitant to tell the Broncos how to run their business. Trade Tebow, after obtaining a Hall of Fame quarterback to take his place? Heavens, no!

  “The Denver Broncos treated him shabbily. He won seven games. He brought them into the playoffs, for heaven’s sakes. I mean, they were a nothing team. He rallied them together with spectacular last-minute passes and, you know, when they beat Buffalo—I mean Pittsburgh, excuse me—it was a tremendous story,” said Robertson from the studios of The 700 Club, where he preaches to a flock of loyal television viewers.

  Robertson did make one unassailable point. The trade was a bummer deal for Tebow, who earnestly, and perhaps a bit naively, believed he could win Elway’s enduring trust.

  Without the heroics of Tebow, the Broncos would have been unable to overcome a 1-4 record to start the 2011 season and make the playoffs. Without the success of Tebow, perhaps Denver would have failed to attract serious attention from Manning, who preferred joining an NFL team with legitimate championship aspirations after he was dumped by Indianapolis.

  Once Manning was signed by Denver, however, keeping Tebow on the Denver roster made zero sense. What was at issue involved more than a conflict of playing styles. The rough-and-tumble Tebow, whose inability to read defensive coverage often resulted in him running around the pocket like a headless chicken, was a bad fit as the understudy to a traditional pocket NFL quarterback the likes of Manning, one of the more precise passers in league history.

  But here is the real reason Elway needed to knock down the circus tent and move Tebow out of town. Too many Tebow supporters were red-hot ideologues, casting stones from their high moral ground at anybody who dared to doubt the skill set of a Bible-thumping quarterback. No different than abortion or gun control, once a debate on Tebow began, it was hard to find safe middle ground. “It’s because he’s a Christian that most sportswriters won’t give him a chance,” insisted David Rice, a good-hearted Tebow disciple from Durango, Colorado. Countered Detroit Lions cornerback Chris Houston, when asked to evaluate Tebow: “He’s no Peyton Manning or Tom Brady or no Michael Vick or none of that. He’s got a long ways to go as far as being a quarterback.”

  As when Dr. Frankenstein created his monster, the Broncos were unprepared for the havoc they would wreak by unleashing Tebow on Denver. I called it the Tebow Thing. It was alive, a phenomenon born of social media, jersey sales, and religious conservatives who stood up and cheered a right-to-life quarterback. He was the child of a difficult pregnancy that his mother refused to abort, so it makes sense his family is pro-life. Tebowing became a verb in the American football lexicon, born of amateur photographers from Denver to the Great Wall of China clicking snapshots of common people saluting the quarterback’s ritual of taking a knee and bowing his head in prayer on the field. “I believe in a big God and special things can happen,” Tebow told me.

  There were other members of the 2011 Broncos who were devoutly religious and unafraid to show it, from Pro Bowl safety Brian Dawkins to third-string quarterback Brady Quinn. Other than ending every interview with “God bless,” Tebow seldom brought faith into his public conversations without being asked. Although labeled by pundits on the left and right as a polarizing figure, what draws people to Tebow is a happy bounce in a step that makes him as instantly likable as a Labrador retriever rather than any secrets-of-the-universe insight. Football coaches like Tebow because in a regimented sport, here is a quarterback who obediently thinks what he is taught on the chalkboard. So coachable, in fact, that manipulative friends and preying foes alike expected Tebow to carry a political football for them, to advance social agendas that revealed as much or more about the opportunists than what was in the heart of the quarterback.

  Despite giggles behind his back when he acted as if the winner of wind sprints to end practice won a gift certificate to Dairy Queen, Tebow won over teammates with a relentless energy and a positive attitude that never took a day off. “I call him Baby Jesus,” Broncos running back Willis McGahee said, with tongue planted firmly in his cheek. When the website Poll Position conducted a telephone survey of 1,076 football fans across the United States, a startling 43 percent testified to a belief that divine intervention played a role in a string of amazing comeback victories by Tebow. Or as late-night comedian David Letterman once said while revealing the Top Ten Little Known Things about Tim Tebow: “Can turn water into Gatorade.”

  Behind the closed doors of the Denver locker room, however, Tebow worked religiously to make t
he Broncos believe that God was on their side. In the hour before a Thursday-night kickoff against the New York Jets on November 17, 2011, as the Broncos prepared to take the field for warm-ups, Denver linebacker Wesley Woodyard looked up from his locker stall and saw Tebow walking toward him with a purpose.

  “Tebow came to me and said, ‘Don’t worry about a thing,’ because God had spoken to him,” Woodyard recalled. At first, the linebacker found the message from Tebow “kinda weird,” because quarterbacks rarely mingle in the end of the locker room where defenders dress.

  “I gave him a big hug and told him thank you,” Woodyard said. “God speaks to people to reach other people.”

  After completing only one of eight passes in the third quarter, Tebow and the Denver offense took the field trailing the Jets 13–10 with five minutes, 54 seconds remaining in the game and 95 long yards between the Broncos and the end zone.

  With suddenly perfect accuracy on his throws, Tebow marched Denver into range for a tying field goal during the last minute of the fourth quarter. But the miracle comeback was just getting warmed up. On third down from the New York 20-yard line, Jets coach Rex Ryan called an all-out blitz. Tebow slipped the pressure, broke to the left sideline, and bulldozed his way into the end zone for the winning touchdown. As the visitors waited to board a charter plane back home, an emergency medical service unit from the Denver Fire Department was dispatched to Denver International Airport. The reason? Ryan had a tummy ache.

  “For all the Tebow haters: You better start believing,” Woodyard told me after the improbable 17–13 Denver victory against the Jets.

  Later the same season, it was Woodyard who would reach out and rip the football from the grasp of Chicago running back Marion Barber to allow a wilder, wackier comeback against the Bears that required the suspension of all disbelief. Was that Woodyard who caused the fumble? Or the hand of God? To claim their sixth straight victory, the Broncos had to overcome a 10-point deficit in the final 2 minutes and 15 seconds of regulation, then won on a 51-yard field goal by Matt Prater in overtime. The Mile High Messiah had struck again.