CHAPTER 15

“AN AMBIVALENT RELATIONSHIP WITH HIS IMAGE”

When Peyton was beaten out for the NFL Rookie of the Year award by Vikings receiver Randy Moss, it seemed to revive all the hedges about him that the Heisman voters had had: he was undeniably a star, but there was something about him that prevented him from being fully accepted. Peyton himself eschewed bravado, considering that, numbers aside, he had found himself for the first time unable to do anything about losing. Feeling like he needed some family comfort, he rode with Archie back to New Orleans in his Chevy Suburban, an 11-hour trek, talking the way they almost never did about coping with losing and the downside of stardom. They also went to see Tennessee win the national title in the Fiesta Bowl, and then took a two-week hunting trip. Peyton used his guest pass to take Cooper to the Super Bowl in Miami; at a league party, he looked around and there was Coop, apparently sloshed, dancing on a table.¹

He was also getting tighter with the kid brother he used to brush by on his way out the door. Eli was preparing for his senior season at Newman High, and whenever Peyton got home, he would tutor him. As Eli recalled, “He’d tell me, ‘This is what we’re learning at Tennessee: On your three-step, make that second step real short and quick to get the ball out.”² Back then, he listened to such tips only because he had to. Later, he knew he’d been given a million-dollar education.

Eli would decide where to go to college with far less fanfare and self-absorption than Peyton had, by doing what Peyton was supposed to do. But first came his senior season, in which he would be swathed in the building story of the second son of the local legend. One national wire story placed him among the top 10 schoolboy quarterbacks in the country, along with another family legatee, Chris Simms, son of Phil, the former Giants QB.³ His yardage slipped to 2,381 but his touchdowns rose to 30, with just eight picks, during Newman’s best-ever season, 11–1—which was marred, as usual, by a playoff loss, to Riverside. Said Frank Gendusa: “Eli got us to the quarters twice, and I take the blame for those games. It seemed we were always one play or one drive away, we just couldn’t push it over the edge. Eli took it very hard.”⁴

In truth, he didn’t need to run up his stats or win a state crown that year. It was all just the run-up to his choice of college, although that decision was predetermined. Eli always believed he belonged at Ole Miss. He did go through the charade of narrowing it down to a handful of schools, but unlike Peyton, he often had no earthly idea who the coaches were or what their records were. Where Peyton strung recruiters along, when they called Eli he would simply tell them he wasn’t interested—if he returned their calls at all. Archie and Peyton would warn him he had to call back, for appearances’ sake. Eli would nod, then promptly ignore the advice. It was Archie who called back. Once, Eli referred to a “Coach Woodenhoffer,” mispronouncing the name of Vanderbilt’s Woody Widenhofer. Furious, Archie barked at him, “Eli, he’s the head coach!” Eli merely shrugged. “I didn’t see myself playing for Vanderbilt,” he explained.⁵ Maybe Eli did know a few things; Widenhofer, coming off 3–8 and 2–9 seasons, was a disaster both at Missouri and then at Vanderbilt.

For some reason, Eli agreed to visit the Austin campus of the University of Texas, where school officials fell all over him, Archie, and Olivia. During a tour of the stadium, the sound of Three Dog Night’s “Eli’s Coming” was pumped through loudspeakers. Longhorns coach Mack Brown had them over to his house for dinner. Ole Miss didn’t need to suck up to him beyond sending a private jet to pick him up and take him to Oxford. By a not-so-curious coincidence, the Rebels’ new head coach—after Archie turned down an offer—was David Cutcliffe, the man Peyton called his surrogate father. Yet Eli had already made up his mind months before that. He had not even bothered to discuss it with Archie and Olivia, assuming they had to know.

The day before he made it official, he told them his choice. Olivia asked him where he was going. “Oh. Ole Miss, of course,” he said. Archie said of that moment, “He didn’t have much to say. He felt good about what he did, but wasn’t real excited. He was just Eli.”⁶ He was prohibited by rule to reveal this to the public until after the final game of the Greenies’ season. Then, word went out to the papers and wire services. The New York Times’ headline read, “Eli Manning Inherits the Reins at Ole Miss.” Later that morning, at a hastily convened press conference at the athletic center, looking like he’d rather be anywhere else, he said, “I wanted to make my decision early, finish out my senior year and have fun.” He felt he needed to add, “This really didn’t have anything to do with my father playing at Ole Miss. That was over thirty years ago. The students on campus don’t know what he did, either.” That reality was quite remarkable, considering the Archie Who mythology and the streets named after him there. But to Gen X, all that was meh. Just to make sure all the bases were covered, he added, “I’m not comparing myself to Peyton, either. I can’t really look at myself that way.”

His words were Manning-like, clipped, though more ingenuous than Peyton’s weighting of every syllable with care. Reporters left the room that day not knowing if he had it in him to lead a high-visibility team. And truth be told, neither did Archie. Still, Archie was satisfied that history had self-corrected. “It probably would have been tougher on Peyton at Ole Miss, because he is such a hard charger and attacks everything,” he said. “Eli’s got his mother’s disposition. I don’t know what his agenda is. I know he doesn’t worry about a whole lot.”

Peyton had spoken with his kid brother about the pitfalls ahead, warning that “there would be some attention to come his way and for him not to get involved with it.”⁷ Cutcliffe would help in that regard. With his wire-rimmed glasses and low-key manner, he was more professor and psychologist than fire-breathing coach. He also had every intention of redshirting Eli. Cutcliffe would not even venture a guess about when and whether he would even get in, as the incumbent Rebel quarterback, Romaro Miller, was a junior. Whatever his fate, Eli seemed to know he had crossed a Rubicon of some kind. In his senior yearbook, under his blithe, Nietzschean deep thought, he wrote, as if he was going off to a gulag, “To Arch and Mom—Even though I never said much or showed any emotions, I love you and I’ll miss you.”⁸

In that same yearbook, Peyton had scribbled, “Watch out, world, Eli is the best one.” And that spring, as Peyton was going through his drills at the Colts’ minicamp, this writer jocularly asked him if, rather than Ryan Leaf, his real future competition would be his kid brother. Instead of chuckling, he pondered for a few seconds.

“That’s a good question,” he said.⁹

When Peyton got to the Colts’ summer training camp in ’99, the team had made big moves. One was a stunner—moving Marshall Faulk, their sole Pro Bowler. Mora figured he really needed a big back, a truck, who could pound it out but also block for Manning on passing plays. And Faulk, his contract up, was demanding more money—a lot more. When the word started circulating about the Colts coveting the University of Miami’s all-purpose halfback Edgerrin James, Faulk wanted out. Polian accommodated him, trading him—cheaply—to the Rams for second-and fifth-round picks. The April draft then gave Polian the opening to land James, who set school records with fourteen 100-yard games and two straight 1,000-yard seasons, with the fourth pick. Most scouts preferred Ricky Williams of Texas, who had led the nation in rushing and set or tied 20 NCAA records, but Polian wondered about Williams’s occasional lapses of judgment on and off the field.

Draft day came with Polian holding a high enough card to land James. This was going to be the mother of all quarterback drafts, the first three picks used to get QBs. Polian really could have cleaned up had he accepted a desperate offer pushed by Mike Ditka, now the coach of the Saints, to swap his No. 12 pick so he could draft Williams. Ditka dangled six Saints picks, plus the first two in the next draft. Had Polian agreed, he likely still would have been able to get James and have all those extra picks. Instead, not sure Ditka really was after Williams, he declined, and the Saints made a deal with the Washington Redskins for their No. 5 pick. Still, the Colts got their man, and so did the Rams. Faulk would help turn the Rams into the “Greatest Show on Turf,” winning a ring that year along with the first of two MVP awards. For a time, Polian took heat even from his own staff for passing on Williams, more so when James held out, missing spring camp. When he eventually inked a seven-year, $49 million deal, he was slow to round into shape, leading one wag in the press to write: “They’ve got Peyton Manning and Ricky Williams. Oops, they passed on Ricky, didn’t they?”¹⁰

Peyton entered his second season a little testy, perhaps haunted by losing as a rookie. He blamed all those interceptions on “a lot of tipped passes . . . some bad decisions, and I guess the defensive backs made some good plays.” When this writer asked a benign question about whether the blitzes and defensive fronts fooled him, he bridled.

“Are you looking for me to agree with you?” he said, glaring.

“About what? All I asked was if—”

“I don’t know how much you know about the actual Xs and Os of the game. People who don’t are always looking for you to say the right things, to give the NFL credit, to say how hard it is to play in this league. Sure, it’s hard. But, really, once you play, you kind of get a feel for it.”

Or at least he hoped so.

There was no question the team was his, for better or worse. But Polian did guess right. Ricky Williams would end up a mixed bag, traded after three years and several failed drug tests, and in and out of football for the next decade. Meanwhile, James was a gem. Polian also bolstered the defense, signing veteran linebacker Cornelius Bennett and safety Chad Cota. Manning tried to establish an egalitarian mind-set. He demanded no special favors. Even in the weight room, he said, “I don’t believe in having a separate workout for quarterbacks. Other players hate that.” During practices, he volunteered to play on the kickoff-coverage squad, because the “defensive tackle who has been going hard on every rep sure does appreciate the breather.”¹¹

In the Colts’ season opener against Buffalo, he was comfy enough to crack up the huddle, calling a play by doing a dead-on imitation of Jeff Spicoli, Sean Penn’s stoner character from Fast Times at Ridgemont High. He threw for 284 yards that day with two touchdowns to Harrison—who, with E. G. Green, had more than 100 yards, just the third time in team history that two receivers gained that many. James ran for 112 yards and a touchdown, catching four passes. The next game, in Foxborough, Manning hit Harrison with two touchdowns in the first quarter, another to James in the second. The Colts led 28–7 at the half, and then bent when Drew Bledsoe heaved three of his four touchdowns, followed by a field goal with 35 seconds left that won it for the Pats, 31–28. As maddening as the loss was, it proved what the Colts could be. Then they beat the Chargers, sans the injured Leaf, with Peyton throwing for 404 yards.

They folded again late against the Dolphins, but then Manning went off on one of his Vol-like streaks. He beat the Cowboys, Jets, Bengals, Giants, and Eagles, the Colts racking up 455 yards in the last. Most games were well balanced between pass and run; only once during the season would he go over 300 passing yards. The defense would allow more than 20 points only four times, over 30 just once.

Week by week, Peyton became more rarefied. Sports Illustrated did its first piece on him as a pro in late November. Titled “Thoroughbred,” its writer, Ivan Maisel, judged him to be “as comfortable on the field as any passer with his limited experience has been in at least a decade, perhaps since Dan Marino blew into Miami in 1983. He is a burgeoning superstar who’s at ease speaking in front of 10,000 people or singing before five times that many country-music fans.” Maisel presented him as a man playing not only against opponents but also his own legacy, with “an ambivalent relationship with his image: It both comforts and annoys him, clearly beating the alternative—would he rather be Leaf?—while sometimes making his actions appear contrived.” Peyton, as always pitch-perfect, said, “I see myself as very normal. Growing up in New Orleans as Archie Manning’s son, I felt like a target, and I’ve always known that whatever I’d do, people would hear about it. So I’ve had my guard up, and maybe that’s molded my personality. But if there’s something I want to do, I’m going to do it.”

Ashley Thompson, still working in Knoxville, now in land development, added, “He’s a very genuine and real person, but not everyone sees that. Even if he wasn’t a big star with a famous father, he’d still hold back in public because that’s his personality. He knows what he wants, and he has a passion for it. Football makes him happy.” And if he couldn’t bring himself to use the word love about her, he tried for some poetry: “She can flow through all the madness, and she’s bright and funny. I probably like her so much because she’s like my mom, thoughtful and caring.” Still, he admitted, “At times I do get lonely. A lot of my buddies are married, and I get tired of being the third wheel. One reason I put in so much work at the facility is that I have nothing to go home to. That’s by design.”¹²

But then, what about him wasn’t? He had already filmed his first TV commercial for Gatorade, with Michael Jordan and Mia Hamm, his status as a winner abetted by the fact that Ryan Leaf wasn’t. Leaf had only played in 10 games the year before, with two touchdowns and 15 interceptions, before being benched. Heckled by fans, he nearly attacked a reporter in the locker room.¹³ He missed this season with a shoulder injury, and then he’d be released, fail with two other teams, and in retirement be jailed on drug and burglary charges,¹⁴ dubbed “the biggest bust in the history of professional sports.”¹⁵ Trying not to gloat, Peyton’s take on Leaf was: “There’s a lot of pressure in a situation like ours. You’ll lose it without the right frame of mind and preparation.”¹⁶

By contrast, the “Perfect Peyton” script was in full bloom, complete with the little quirks the public loves to read about pampered superstars. This one, wrote Maisel, had “charming clumsiness. . . . There’s something disarming about a multimillionaire innocently hanging up jeans in his locker with PEYTON printed in indelible ink on the inside of the waistband.” An old friend described Peyton as “too easy to make fun of. He’s mature beyond his years as a public figure, and he has an amazing grasp of what to do on the field, but he can’t do anything else on his own. He’s always going to be the guy who steps in dog poop, and every time he eats a sandwich or a hamburger, he’ll end up with ketchup down his leg, mustard on his ear. He’s a terrible driver, and he can’t sing, though he thinks he can.” For good measure, Cooper told of the time Olivia visited Peyton’s apartment and saw him “turning his underwear inside out so he wouldn’t have to use the washing machine. A couple of weeks ago he called my wife and asked her how to heat up soup.” Ashley also reported that when he didn’t know how to order Chinese food, she did it for him—from Knoxville.¹⁷

An article years later by Robert O’Connell in the Atlantic recalled him in his early pro years as a “gangly” guy seemingly playing “in borrowed, ill-fitting pads” with “a massive forehead that featured a real pressure-induced spot whenever he removed his helmet and revealed his Tintin-like haircut,” who “moved about the pocket as if stepping barefoot on summertime blacktop,” whose “throwing motion looked overstudied, even a touch robotic.” Other descriptive phrases were “inelegant bodily style” and “stiff and awkward shambling.”¹⁸ And yet, even in this context, he was a rising paradigm of a new age of cerebral quarterbacking—the same article noting that his “mental diligence replac[ed] physical toughness as the defining characteristic” of the football culture. Of course, that was an oversimplification; no one took a hit better, got up to face more punishment quicker, or hated coming out any more than Peyton Manning.

In midseason, on consecutive weeks, the Colts swept the season series with the Jets, then subdued the Dolphins on a winning field goal at the gun after Miami tied it with 36 seconds left. They reeled off 11 straight wins and clinched a playoff berth, a loss to the Bills on the last Sunday bringing their record to 13–3—a perfect reversal of the year before, the largest turnaround in NFL history and the first season of double-digit wins for the Colts since ’77. Winning the AFC East by two games over Buffalo, one win off Jacksonville’s league-best record, they sent Peyton, Harrison, and James to the Pro Bowl. James had a league-best 1,553 rushing yards, Harrison the most receiving yards, with 1,663. Peyton threw for 4,135 yards with a 90.7 rating—behind only Steve Beuerlein and Kurt Warner in both categories—had 26 touchdowns, 15 interceptions, and a mere 14 sacks. The Colts offense was ranked third, the defense fourth. The reward was a first-round playoff date two weeks after the turn of the new millennium, at the RCA Dome against the Tennessee Titans, who also went 13–3 but made the playoffs as a wild card.

This was a pungent irony for Peyton, as a good many fans coming in from Tennessee were Vol alumni and fans. The Titans were a conservative unit. Coach Jeff Fisher and his offensive coordinator—none other than Les Steckel, Archie’s old foil in Minnesota—didn’t ask much from quarterback Steve McNair. Fullback Eddie George carried the load. The defense had rough customers, like ferocious rookie All-Pro end Jevon Kearse. The Colts were favored by 5½ points, and some of the talking heads on the pregame shows talked them up—one, former quarterback Boomer Esiason, saying he liked the Colts’ chances to go to the Super Bowl.¹⁹ Few figured the Titans could rope Indianapolis into a defensive battle, but that’s what happened. The first touchdown came in the third quarter, when George—who rushed for 162 yards—broke through for a 68-yard touchdown jaunt, putting the Titans up 13–9. Harrison was double-teamed, and Peyton, under duress, cracked. He went only 19 of 42, for 227 yards, and James did little, with 56 yards on 20 carries. The Titans took a 19–9 lead with four minutes to go. Then Peyton dropped back from the Titan 15, saw a gap, and ran it in with just under two minutes left. But it ended there, at 19–16. “Colts Dream Season Falls Incomplete” was the headline in the Star.

The Titans moved on to the Super Bowl, where they lost to Faulk’s Rams. For the Colts, there were bigger problems than the ones exploited by the Titans. Before the game, it was reported that four players had been convicted of assaulting women, prompting vows by the team to “address off-field abuse,”²⁰ which they never really did. And the Manning training room escapade was soon to break open again. Yet overall, the season was an enormous success, propelling Peyton to a close second-place finish behind Warner as the league’s MVP. The implications were clear: the Colts, led by their shiny young quarterback, were a new power. And if the Manning brand wasn’t bullish enough, there was another one just like him down in Dixie, biding his time.