CHAPTER 23

GOODBYE, HELLO

Without Peyton, the Colts bounced from one quarterback to another and ended the 2011 season a woeful 2–14. For Jim Irsay, it became harder to accept that he had given all that loot to a guy who hadn’t been straight with him. By early 2012, he seemed less interested in Peyton’s recovery, which was progressing well. Peyton had gone back to Durham, North Carolina, in February to live with Dave Cutcliffe and have the coach oversee his reorientation, Peyton in his Colts helmet as he did drills with the Blue Devils squad. Cutcliffe had him start with basic exercises and drills he hadn’t done since he was a kid. Again, this took place under cover, the Duke people keeping it from the media, and even the Colts.

But by now, Irsay had committed to rebuilding his team. He had fired Jim Caldwell and his staff and the two Polians, not even allowing Bill Polian the dignity of retiring. Peyton, seeing himself on an island being deserted, came to the Colts’ offices during Super Bowl week. After a perfunctory meeting with the new GM, Ryan Grigson, and sensing a growing depression in the office, he was moved to tell Bob Kravitz of his findings: people were “walking around on eggshells,” and he himself had no idea whether the team intended to keep him.

That might have ripped it for Irsay. A few days later, when he introduced Chuck Pagano as the new coach, he was asked about Manning’s remarks. Clearly “irked,” as a reporter wrote, he bit his lip as he said, “I have so much affection and appreciation for Peyton. I mean, we’re family. We always will be and we are.” Then, biting harder, “He’s a politician. I mean, look at . . . when it comes to being competitive, let’s just say on a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being the highest, we’re both 11s, OK? So there’s been plenty of eggshells scattered around this building by him with his competitive desire to win.”¹

Though politician was the exact word for Peyton Manning, the implicit criticism stung him. He rang up Kravitz and sought to clarify his own words. “I wasn’t trying to paint the Colts in a bad light,” he began, “but it’s tough when so many people you’ve known for so long are suddenly leaving. I feel very close to a lot of these guys and we’ve done great things together. It’s hard to watch an old friend clean out his office. That’s all I was trying to say.” He went on, “Mr. Irsay and I owe it to each other and to the fans of the organization to handle this appropriately and professionally, and I think we will. I’ve already reached out to Mr. Irsay, . . . and when the time is right for Mr. Irsay and I to sit down, I look forward to a healthy conversation about my future.”²

Irsay also toned it down. Taking to Twitter again, he cooed, “Peyton and I love each other, that goes without saying.” The next day, he was asked by a reporter if it was possible Manning had played his last game as a Colt. Trying to sound noble, he said, “This isn’t an ankle, it isn’t a shoulder. Often times the NFL is criticized for putting someone out there at risk, and I’m not going to doing that. I think he and I just need to see where his health is because this isn’t about money or anything else. It’s about his life and his long-term health.”

But in truth, it was about something else. March 8, the day when Irsay would have to pay Manning’s next bonus, a weighty $28 million, was fast approaching. Having been hoodwinked about Manning’s condition the year before, or so he believed, the last thing Irsay needed was to be fleeced again. Anticipating this as an undercurrent, Manning announced a week later that Dr. Robert Watkins had checked him out in Marina del Rey, found his neck sufficiently healed, and cleared him to play again, though there would be residual blips such as finger numbness and weak triceps muscles. Even so, as a Star headline tellingly pointed out, “Doctor, Not Team, Clears Manning.”

In early March he was back at Duke, having invited Jeff Saturday, Dallas Clark, Austin Collie, and Brandon Stokley to work with him—all of whom had been either summarily released by the Colts or, in Saturday’s case, was a free agent and not wanted back. Whether that sat well with Irsay, only the owner knew for sure, though if he sincerely wanted Manning back, it should have cheered him that these workouts proved he was making real progress. Running the same drills with the receivers that they did in Colts practices, he put them through exhausting paces. At one point he had them simulate the 2010 AFC championship game against the Jets, minute by minute. “It was a little over the top,” Stokley recalled of how they ran the same plays and even took time-outs at the exact intervals that they had been called in real time. For his part, Cutcliffe was amazed at his old pupil’s reanimation. “You hear and read about people who overcome things they shouldn’t,” he said. “I saw it with my own eyes.”³

Manning had not heard from Irsay since they uneasily tried to smooth things over. It was a good sign that Pagano brought Bruce Arians back to Indianapolis as his quarterbacks coach. But the other omens weren’t so good. Given Peyton’s age and uncertain future, the owner was now looking past him to a new, young savior, one he could acquire, ironically enough, only because of Manning—or, more accurately, his absence: the Colts had the first pick in the draft. Irsay had already determined that his team would use it to draft Stanford quarterback Andrew Luck, considered the best, surest quarterback prospect to enter the draft in a generation. Some believed the Colts had tanked the season just for that reason. The town was buzzing about it, though most assumed Luck would back up Manning for the foreseeable future. Then, on March 6—a month before the draft, and two days before he would have to write Manning a check for $28 million—Irsay dropped the hammer, announcing he had given Peyton Manning his outright release.

It was a shock, one that tore Manning up and hurt his pride. Said Archie, “I think it broke his heart. I think he understood the reality [was], ‘It’s time for me to go.’ And then I think he reconsidered and said, ‘No, I’m supposed to play my whole career here.’ So he went back and told them, ‘I’ll help Andrew, and we’ll make it work. I want to stay.’”⁴ Irsay was deaf to the pleas, though in fairness he probably did Peyton a favor by not creating a situation where the fans would be calling for Luck if and when Peyton faltered. As Kravitz wrote, “The moves were made, ultimately, because they had to be made. Because as the late, great 49ers coach Bill Walsh once said, you’re best to move a player one year too early than one year too late.”⁵ Indeed, drafting Luck was the easiest way to justify ending the Manning era, even if, when the team called a farewell press conference a day later, these hard, cold realities had no place in the mawkish rite of counterfeit sorrow.

Irsay was right about one thing, saying, “It’s been very hard on everyone around here, and it’s been very hard on Peyton, too.” But he had been eager to turn Manning from icon to castoff in one year. Already, the huge image of him affixed to the exterior of Lucas Oil Stadium was being torn down when, looking regal in a gray suit, he entered the room and stood towering over the stubby, goateed Irsay, neither exchanging a glance, both looking like they should be at a funeral. Manning and Polian, who had himself swallowed his pride to help Irsay’s spilling of tears and tributes, were sincerely emotional, and Irsay, his own distraught emotions no doubt eased a bit by the money he had saved himself, began by saying, “The number 18 jersey will never be worn again by a Colt on the field.”

Peyton then stepped to the microphone and was extraordinarily gracious toward Irsay, which was perhaps the best acting he’s ever done. “I’ve been a Colt for almost all of my adult life,” he said, fighting back tears, voice quavering, “but I guess in life and in sports, we all know that nothing lasts forever. Times change, circumstances change, and that’s the reality of playing in the NFL. Jim and I have spoken extensively about where we are today. And our conversations have led both of us to recognize that our circumstances make it best for us to take this next step.”

He went on: “This town and this team mean so much to me. It truly has been a[n] honor to play in Indianapolis. I do love it here. I love the fans and I will always enjoy having played for such a great team. I will leave the Colts with nothing but good thoughts and gratitude to Jim, the organization, my teammates, the media, and especially the fans. . . . And as I go, I go with just a few words left to say, a few words I want to address to Colts fans everywhere: Thank you very much from the bottom of my heart. I truly have enjoyed being your quarterback.”⁶

And that was it, a “classy farewell,” wrote Kravitz, by the man who had set a cornucopia of records in that uniform and now was exiting stage right, taking the team’s identity out the door with him. Before Elvis left the building, he lingered with around two dozen employees of the team. “Maintenance, secretaries, equipment guys, everybody who’d been there a long time,” he recalled. “Some guys leave a place after a long time, and they’re bitter. Not me. But it was important for me to get closure.”⁷ He was driven to the airport by an equipment manager who recalled, “There were a lot of tears.”

The fans would have a new toy to make the sense of loss, even anger about seeing him go, easier to get over—though the Luck era would roll out fast, and then seem to run dry after a few seasons. And Peyton Manning’s new priority would be selling himself to other teams as a 36-year-old rewired quarterback with numb fingers, coming off unprecedented surgery, who hadn’t played for a year. Any new team would need to pay him the stratospheric money Irsay had backed out of—a big risk. But after a year of hell, he would go into the hunt without compromising. He’d made the commitment to keep Manning Inc. a valuable stock, and now it was someone else’s turn to buy into it.

At first, he had no idea what a free agent is supposed to do. But this was just another subject for him to study from top to bottom. He began to draw up a pros-and-cons list of teams that needed a quarterback, weighting each one based on front office stability, tenure of the coaches, style of offense, and possibility of winning. The money, he trusted, would fall into place according to how badly a team wanted him, another factor. Besides Condon and Crosthwait, he placed a good deal of trust in Cutcliffe’s opinions. Indeed, that link no doubt led the Tennessee Titans to put in a bid, the nostalgia of coming “home”—his real home had a guy named Brees—to the scene of his pro apprenticeship and his old rabid fans, as well as giving him a chance to beat Irsay twice a season. Another early contender was San Francisco, with whom he could walk in the footprints of Joe Montana (who had also been forced out late in his career, which he finished in Kansas City).

Following his release, he spent time at his vacation home in Miami, where local reporters pestered him for interviews. He walled himself off to even old friends—his family, Condon, and Crosthwait forming a protective shield that his old favorite Vols receiver, Marcus Nash, found “a little sad,” given that the Peyton he knew, the one he saw every day, had hated the notion of needing to be shielded. After his maniacal research, one team met all the criteria: the one whose personnel decisions were being made by the quarterback he revered most, after his own father. That, of course, was John Elway in Denver, who really, really needed a quarterback. The one he had, the former Heisman Trophy winner Tim Tebow, had taken the Broncos on a weird, wild ride. Taking over early in 2011 when they were 1–4, he somehow got them into the playoffs at 8–8, even beating the Steelers in the first round of the playoffs with a long touchdown pass on the first play of overtime. But he never proved he could be better than his anemic completion rate of 46 percent. As popular as Tebow was, he simply was not the future. Elway pushed the Broncos’ owner, Pat Bowlen, to pursue Manning, which, while obviously desirable and the best conceivable way to disappear Tebow, seemed impossible given the team’s usually conservative spending habits.

Indeed, Tebow would be making just $1.5 million the next season. The Denver Post’s football writer, Mike Klis, ventured, “Once all the bids come in and the recruiting pitches are made, the Broncos probably will have as much chance at signing free-agent Peyton Manning as Tim Tebow does of starting an interview without thanking the Lord.”⁸ Added the antediluvian columnist Woody Paige, “Despite all the shrieking and screeching, Peyton Manning is not coming to Denver to play—unless he’s on the visiting team.”⁹ But only three days after Peyton was released, Bowlen, Elway, head coach John Fox, and offensive coordinator Mike McCoy flew to Miami, picked him up, and brought him to the team’s office facility in Englewood, Colorado. He had a great time with Elway, the pair arguably the best quarterbacks of their respective generations, but Manning’s head was still spinning and he felt rushed. As in Miami, TV reporters got wind of him being there and followed him right from the moment the plane landed. The Broncos had seven vans go to and from their Dove Valley training complex to the Cherry Hills Country Club, where Manning was staying, so the media wouldn’t know which one Peyton was in. The Broncos fawned all over him. As another Post scribe, Mark Kiszla, wrote, Tebow “took the most vicious hit of his NFL career Friday, when he got run over by the red carpet that Denver rolled out for Peyton Manning.”¹⁰

Elway, as an inducement, was about to sign Brandon Stokley, and during his stay Peyton threw a ball around with his old Colts receiver. At the time, Elway described Manning as being “in shock” about being released. “Everybody kept telling him he was going to get released, and he didn’t believe them until it happened.” Peyton had also set up a meeting with Redskins coach Mike Shanahan, who lived in Denver. Indeed, Fox, a rah-rah type who had coached the Panthers for nine years before taking the job in Denver in ’11, recalled that Manning “sounded bothered” on the visit and “wasn’t in his comfort zone.”¹¹ Elway was wise enough to know the hard sell would turn him off. Having made the team’s pitch, he told Peyton to take his time. But with spring camps only weeks away, there was little time left. Back home, he and Cutcliffe went over all the possibilities, a process Peyton says was “a full-court press situation.”

One of six other teams wanting a shot at him was the Redskins, though it would have meant facing Eli twice each season, with all the hysteria that entailed; when news broke that the Redskins had traded up in the draft to be able to get Robert Griffin III, they came off the list anyway. While Peyton was in Colorado, Seahawks coach Pete Carroll impulsively flew in to make a pitch, surprising Peyton. Carroll said he’d fly him to Seattle and show him around. However, Peter King wrote in Sports Illustrated, “Peyton Manning does not like surprises. He said no thanks. Carroll flew home.”¹² Driven to the airport by Stokley, Manning went to Phoenix, where he met with the Cardinals, and then had a Dolphins front-office party meet him at the airport in Indianapolis, where he would spend one day before heading off to Nashville and the Titans. Then he was back with Cutcliffe again in Durham, where he swore he thought he saw Jim Harbaugh watching him throw—from a distance, through binoculars, a hoodie over his head. Speaking on the phone with Olivia, Peyton said she’d never guess who he saw watching him under a hoodie.

“Bill Belichick?” she said, cracking him up.

Elway and Fox also watched him throw at Duke, though not through binoculars. Other teams were pending, too, the Jets and Chiefs among them. Peyton made some calls to people he trusted for their advice, including Tony Dungy and Bill Parcells. As Dungy says, rather than anything football, Peyton wanted to find the closest thing he could to the “family” womb he’d had in Indianapolis, at least until Irsay blew that up. That was what he felt with Elway and Fox. Frank Tripucka, the first Broncos quarterback in the AFL days, whose No. 18 jersey had been retired by the team, graciously said Peyton could wear it.¹³ Even President Obama offered his opinion that Manning seemed right for the Rocky Mountain scenery, “if natural beauty has anything to do with it.”¹⁴ Other quarterbacks had felt that way, until losing set in. Post-Elway, Jake Plummer, Jay Cutler, Kyle Orton, and Brady Quinn had all fled the team. And three Broncos were to be suspended for four games each for using performance-enhancing drugs.

But the other pieces were in place. The team seemed a quarterback away from becoming a serious contender in the AFC, and now the best quarterback in the game may have wanted in.

Not that this appealed to everyone in Denver. Kiszla thought merely courting Manning had damaged a good thing. “Without taking a snap for the Broncos,” he wrote, “Peyton Manning has engineered one of the biggest upsets in the history of a storied NFL franchise. He killed Tebowmania. After the anticipation of a Hall of Fame quarterback wearing orange and blue, how can Denver possibly go back to Tim Tebow? With all due respect to Manning and his recent medical issues, however, the quarterback who has his neck on the line is Broncos executive John Elway.” Kiszla also wondered about “the consequences should Manning get hurt, while Tebow is doing his thing for the Dolphins in Miami? There are not too many things that would tempt me to bury [Elway’s] old No. 7 jersey in the closet, but that would rank at the top.”¹⁵

Ol’ No. 7 was willing to risk it. It was implicit that anyone wanting Peyton knew he wouldn’t come cheap; in fact, the inability of some teams to fit him under the $130 million salary cap was one of the factors he considered. For example, the Cardinals had to know what his decision would be before their deadline to pay a $7 million bonus to quarterback Kevin Kolb; when Manning refused to rush his decision, they dropped out. The Broncos, though, thanks to their history of chintzy spending, had all the room they would need. Speculation mounted that they might even pony up a $100 million deal.

Manning made his decision on Sunday, March 18. That morning, he called Elway, who was with Fox at the time. When Elway got the good word, he shot the coach a thumbs-up. Jumping up out of his chair with glee, Fox recalled, “I almost pulled both hamstrings.” Condon and Elway talked turkey later in the day. The next morning, Peyton flew out to Dove Valley for the announcement, even as the contract was still being written. When he arrived at the Broncos office and shook hands with a “thrilled” Bowlen, some issues were still being ironed out. In the end, the contract was for five years, projected to perhaps $96 million—but with a lot of ifs. He would make $18 million in ’12—paid out in 17 game checks of over $1 million each—but the Broncos wisely protected themselves with an “injury waiver”; if he passed a physical after the first season, he would be guaranteed $40 million over the 2013 and 2014 seasons, with a salary cut eased by a $10 million restructuring bonus in ’13. If at any time he reinjured his neck or flunked a physical, the contract could be voided. No one in the Manning camp objected. Grateful as Peyton was, he even kicked in a $4.3 million gift to child-services charities around Denver.

Manning, who knew the color well, held up his new orange No. 18 jersey for the cameras, smiled with Bowlen and Elway and oozed, “I’m very excited to begin the next chapter of my playing career for the Denver Broncos.” He said he “hated” having to reject the other teams, but in the end, “I felt the Broncos were just a great fit.” He also said he wasn’t “where I want to be” physically.¹⁶ But if pride had to do with it, Elway, in his welcoming remarks, put it best.

“We signed a Hall of Famer with a chip on his shoulder,” he said.

Making time for each reporter or microphone carrier, when Peyton was done he walked downstairs to the locker room, put on shorts and a T-shirt, and began working out in the gym. He followed that routine for the next three days, during which Tebow was traded to the Jets, to be dumped after a year and then be out of the game after two brief, failed attempts to catch on. Notice was taken of the two Frankenstein’s monster–like scars on Manning’s neck, but as iffy as he was, it was already being reported that the team was banking on an economic boom, his arrival sure to spike local TV and radio ad rates, stadium revenues, licensing fees, and merchandise sales (though Tebow’s was the second-highest-selling jersey in the league). He was already doing TV promos for the team. The league would schedule his debut, at home at Sports Authority Field at Mile High against the Steelers, as the first Sunday night game of the season. Elway immediately went about spending what was left in the coffers to give Manning pieces, signing several receivers, among them free agent Andre Caldwell.

The offense in ’11 had been entirely built around the run, leading the league in rushing yards, Willis McGahee gaining nearly 1,200 and Tebow over 600. They were next-to-last in passing, even with receivers like Eric Decker and Demaryius Thomas. The defense was unsettled but on the rise, blitzing outside linebacker Von Miller winning the Defensive Rookie of the Year award. Expectations were clearly high; Mike Klis wrote in the Post, “Merely by closing the deal with Peyton Manning . . . Elway has become a leading candidate for NFL executive of the year.”¹⁷

When Peyton began working out informally with the receivers, gradually building intensity through spring and summer camp, he was still getting his sea legs. But Fox put the offense in his hands, his ear-numbing word salad and gesticulations prior to the snap to remain intact, and of course the endlessly mimicked “Omaha!” added to the glossary. His first official practices in early August drew such attention that the Broncos moved an intrasquad scrimmage to Mile High, where it was played before 20,000 fans. Each of Manning’s passes was charted in the paper.

His regimen was under the eye of a Denver trainer, a masseur, and a private chef. Peter King noted that “Broncos nutritionist Bryan Snyder directs Manning’s cook on what to prepare for him on which days (Thursday is pasta night), and accompanies Manning on walks through the team cafeteria. ‘It’s, “You can have one piece of that, two pieces of this,”’ Manning says, ‘like you would with a child.’”¹⁸ As for his mechanics, his whole neurological system had to be reprogrammed. As Luke Richesson, the Broncos’ strength and conditioning coach put it, “We broke him down like a car—take the motor out, get the alignment straight, then focus on the horsepower.”¹⁹ Finding Manning weak and “really detrained,” hardly able to even pick up a medicine ball, Richesson started him with light weights most men would scoff at.

He looked like a retread, limping onto the field with his knee brace visible and a thick therapeutic glove swaddling his right hand, but his timing was all but perfect again, and of course his mind was never an issue. Right away, his presence galvanized the team—“You want to be better because it’s Peyton Manning,” testified Demaryius Thomas. “I know I’m a better player because he’s here.” The fans embraced him instantly. From day one, he was getting over 300 letters a day, leading him to hire two staffers to screen them for him, and he personally answered the ones that moved him, saving a copy of each in a big computer file. Many were from people who had or would have neck surgery. In Dove Valley, food shops near the team’s training field sold out their supplies to the mobs of fans who came to catch a glimpse of him in practice. Televisions all around the state tuned in the Broncos’ preseason games, in which he played little and wowed no one, throwing three picks in the first two games.

As he had on the Colts, he had his own routines. He would sit with the team’s equipment managers, draining cans of beer, watching game film on his iPad, sometimes running a single play back for half an hour. One guy had to carry his baseball cap, which he’d put on when on the sideline; another was in charge of his chin strap.²⁰ Others would help wrap his legs and torso, even his feet, in tape to help cushion his body, a painstaking task that took an hour. The rituals, of course, would mean nothing if he didn’t recover his form in a whole new way. Though his arm wasn’t quite as strong as before, he adjusted by getting more power from his legs, producing arm velocity as would a pitcher driving hard off the rubber. His footwork was more intricate, with less wasted movement. Knowing he was hitting it again, the old cockiness was back, his recent softer side discarded. When people had told him they were praying for him, he had been taking it to heart. Now, he would look at them with annoyance.

“I’m fine,” he’d say. “You don’t have to do that.”

Despite the progress, he was still a shadow of himself, bewildering fans who had no idea how far he had fallen. He had his timing, but the little bit of zip he lost on throws turned those old wobbly completions into aimless passes or even interceptions. Fox was a conservative coach who wanted to pound on the ground, but he gave Manning the reins, aware that when the Colts won the title, they had the league’s worst running game. The Colts’ hurry-up Lightning offense was adapted as the Broncos’ Bolt offense, as a collaborative effort with McCoy and quarterbacks coach Adam Gase. In many ways, the swirl of passing patterns was indistinguishable from the Colts’.

When the opener arrived on September 9, Peyton was well aware of the pressure he was under. “End of the day,” he said, “my contract really is only a one-year contract,” given that only the first year was guaranteed.²¹ He set out to become the first quarterback to win championships with different teams. The bettors were on board. With Manning having won at least 10 games 11 times and thrown for 4,000 yards 11 times, the Vegas oddsmakers gave the Broncos the third-best shot to win it all, behind the Patriots and Packers. But was he that Manning?

On the first drive of the game, played on an 85-degree night in the Rockies, with an electric current in the air and people making a ruckus all around Mile High, Manning’s first pass as a Bronco was a 13-yard completion to Decker. In the second quarter, he led a drive on which he ran seven yards for a first down and halfback Knowshon Moreno ran it in from seven yards. But the Steelers led 10–7 at the half, and a nine-minute drive directed by Ben Roethlisberger then made it 13–7. Two plays later, the ball on the Broncos 29, the Steelers tried to disguise a blitz by lining up a linebacker on the tight end. But Peyton read it and called a quick screen to Thomas. Center J. D. Walton and guard Zane Beadles got out ahead of him, and their blocks sprang Thomas for a 71-yard touchdown romp. That pass made history—it was Manning’s 400th touchdown pass, a mark previously reached only by Favre and Marino. Thomas, whose end zone shtick is to drop the ball like a hot mic, didn’t realize it. Naturally, Manning did. “Peyton asked me why I didn’t have the ball,” Thomas recalled, “so I went back and got it.”²²

Manning was on a roll. In the fourth quarter, he hit on six of seven passes, the last a one-yard touchdown to tight end Jacob Tamme, followed by another to McGahee for the two-point conversion and the lead, 22–19. After a Broncos field goal, a 43-yard pick-six by cornerback Tracy Porter—the same guy who had sealed the Saints’ Super Bowl win over Manning with the 74-yard interception—made the final 31–19. It was a heck of a debut, with Peyton going 19 of 26 for 253 yards, with two touchdowns and a passer rating of 129.2. And it set in motion a season in which Manning was able to override his physical limits, although it took the defense belatedly congealing for the Broncos to get in gear.

The Broncos finished 13–3. They had the fourth-ranked offense and second-ranked defense, giving up a mere 13 rushing touchdowns. They closed out the regular season by blasting the Chiefs 38–3, Manning going 23 of 29 for 304 yards and three touchdowns, a 144.8 rating. That gave him 37 touchdowns against 11 interceptions, 4,659 yards (41 shy of his career high, two years before), a 68.6 completion percentage, and a 105.8 passer rating, second to Aaron Rodgers. These numbers seemed like science fiction, considering he was still working his way back. His performance won him his sixth selection as first-team All-Pro. Thomas—his new Marvin Harrison or Reggie Wayne—was on the second team, catching 94 balls, 10 for touchdowns. Five receivers had over 40 catches. Three runners combined for over 1,500 yards. Von Miller was a first-team All-Pro, Elvis Dumervil and cornerback Champ Bailey making the second team. Elway should have won Executive of the Year, but he placed second to, ironically, Ryan Grigson—for drafting Andrew Luck, who led the Colts to an 11–5 record and a playoff berth. Both Jim Irsay and Pat Bowlen had profited quite handsomely from the fall and rise of Peyton Manning.

A stunning success in every way—he was beaten out for MVP only by Vikings halfback Adrian Peterson, who broke the 2,000-yard barrier, and Brady—his comeback put him back in the lead of the Manning brothers’ one-on-one rivalry. Eli had another fine season of his own—3,948 yards, 26 touchdowns, 15 interceptions. In a game against the Bucs, a 41–34 Giants win, he went 31 of 51 for 510 yards, the fourth 400-yard game of his career and just the 13th time a quarterback had gone over 500, a threshold not crossed by Peyton. But with the team sitting at 6–2, the defense collapsed, keeping Eli off the field a lot, even though, as they lost five of the last eight games, the question around the city was: What’s wrong with Eli? Finishing 9–7 and out of the playoffs, it was the first of four straight seasons of the same.

And so Peyton had the playoffs to himself, and a pathway to delivering another championship. The first playoff encounter was against the Ravens, who had disposed of the Colts but had only gone 10–6 during the season. The danger for the Broncos was that the Ravens had the second-best pass defense. And Joe Flacco had matured into a near-elite quarterback. They also had motivation; Ray Lewis had recently announced that he would be retiring at season’s end. The Broncos had mauled the Ravens 34–17 during the season. But they were a rabid bunch, talking trash and unnerving people. And they had a familiar face at offensive coordinator: Jim Caldwell.

It was also the Ravens’ type of weather: 13 degrees with a windchill of 2. But Manning’s passes cut through the Colorado wind—as did Trindon Holliday, the Broncos’ five-foot, five-inch return specialist and former college sprint champion who took back an early punt a playoff-record 90 yards for one touchdown and the second-half kickoff 104 yards for another, making him the first to score two TDs on kick returns in a postseason game. In a game of wild swings, Flacco torched Bailey for two long touchdown passes and Peyton threw first-half touchdown passes to Stokley and Moreno, but also had a pick returned for a 39-yard touchdown by Corey Graham. His third TD, 17 yards to Thomas, had Denver ahead 35–28 with 7:11 to go. They looked to be in the clear when, with just a half minute left, Flacco faced third-and-three on his own 30 with no time-outs left. Denver dropped eight men back into coverage. Flacco stepped up in the pocket and heaved one, long and high enough to almost cross into the haze of the lights, all the way to the Broncos 20, where Jacoby Jones had slipped past free safety Rahim Moore and cornerback Tony Carter. Moore leaped too early to bat the ball down. Jones grabbed it and jogged into the end zone.

The sudden game-tying, 70-yard touchdown seemed to stun John Fox. He had 31 seconds, the ball on his own 20 and two time-outs. But he had Manning take a knee and send it into overtime. He then had him play conservatively instead of making risky long throws. No one could score, and with a minute left, Peyton, looking to get into field-goal range, rolled right, then threw left, a difficult task for any quarterback, much less one with reduced throwing strength. Aimed at Stokley, the ball died in flight and was picked off, again by Graham—a turnover only slightly less awful than the killer interception by Porter, and one that Mike Klis called an “egregious sin.”²³ So now it went to a second OT, in which Ray Rice ran it close enough for the Ravens to kick the winning field goal. After four hours and 11 minutes of heaven and hell, Peyton was once more explaining the pain of a loss he couldn’t explain, his 290 yards and three touchdown passes wasted.

No one could have quibbled with him calling his interception a “bad throw” and remarking, “Probably the decision wasn’t great either.” But many fans blamed Fox for playing it so cautiously. Leaving the recriminations to others, Manning recycled the good-loser sap he kept stored in his bark for these moments, saying, “Certainly we did a lot of good things this season, but as of right now, it’s hard to think about anything besides the loss tonight.”²⁴ Showing class, he dressed and then trudged into the Ravens locker room, holding his son Marshall’s hand, to congratulate Lewis, who was about to win his second Super Bowl, perhaps by turns envying Lewis for not needing the game anymore—and pitying himself that he did.