CHAPTER 25

“GONNA DRINK A WHOLE LOTTA BEER”

Eli, again the forgotten Manning, had suffered through one more arduous season in 2014—though he did find a nuclear weapon, Odell Beckham Jr. The kid from Isidore Newman School had been drafted as a junior out of LSU in the first round, and after battling early hamstring injuries, finished with 91 catches, 13 touchdowns, and a league-high average of 108 yards per game. He made All-Pro and was named Offensive Rookie of the Year. In May 2015, he would beat out Rob Gronkowski for the cover of the Madden NFL 16 video game. And he actually seemed relatively humble and well adjusted. The rest of the season was a bust, the Giants sinking to 6–10, but Eli had no obligation to cut his salary, and at 34 was about to sign his fattest deal.

Negotiations between Tom Condon and Jerry Reese lingered until September 12, one day before the opening game, on Sunday night against the Cowboys in Dallas. It was a four-year, $84 million contract extension, with a no-trade clause and a $31 million signing bonus. The $65 million in guaranteed money equaled that given Philip Rivers as the most ever. Almost all of this was in salary, with only minimal bonuses. In total, he would pocket $68.5 million over the next three seasons, $101.5 million over the next five. At $17.5 million in salary the first year, he could finally leap ahead of Peyton, behind only Rodgers ($22 million), Wilson ($21.9 million), Roethlisberger ($21.8 million), and Brees ($18.8 million). If he made it through five years, he would earn $235 million over his career, to Peyton’s $248.7 million. And he would still only be 38.

He began earning this kingly meed with what had become a normal Giants tease, leading to a fall. Tony Romo, himself making $15 million for an ongoing career of big-game failure, completed 36 of 45 for 356 yards and three touchdowns in week one, but his two interceptions and a 57-yard fumble return for a touchdown allowed Eli, despite a humdrum 20 of 36 for 193 yards and no touchdowns, to hold a late 23–20 lead. That was when Eli began to overthink. After killing four minutes with a long drive, he had a first-and-goal at the four. He then revived the strategy from the Super Bowl; trying to take more time off the clock, he called runs for Rashad Jennings on the next two plays, telling him, “Don’t score!” Then, on third-and-goal from the one, Dallas having burned their time-outs, he rolled out and, when no one was open, tossed the ball out of bounds—stopping the clock with 1:43 to go rather than, by taking a sack, keeping it running. Losing the chance to put the game on ice, the Giants made the field goal but left Romo too much time, and he moved crisply from his own 28 down the field, finding Jason Witten from 11 yards away for the winning score with 13 seconds left.

Eli took the hit for the snafus, saying it was “100% on me and that can’t happen. . . . It hurts, but it’s supposed to hurt.”¹ Coughlin tried to mitigate the fallout. “I completely trust Eli, always have,” he said. “He’s extremely into the game. He’s aware of all the circumstances, and as he comes over to the sideline, he relates what he sees and so on and so forth from his position. To be honest with you, nothing like that has ever happened. His mind was in the right place here, he just didn’t have the facts right, and unfortunately we didn’t get it corrected.”² The papers wouldn’t let him off the hook. One headline was “Comedy of Errors,” with Manning called “boneheaded,” “clueless,” and “absentminded.” Wrote Steve Serby in the New York Post, “Shockingly, it was the team’s rock, Manning, who let it down the most.”

The Giants sputtered thereafter, their chance to break through ruined by two more almost identical soul-crushers. At 5–4, they met the unbeaten Patriots at MetLife Stadium. Though heavy underdogs, the Manning–Beckham connection was already lethal. Moments after Brady threw a first-quarter touchdown, from his own 13 Eli went bombs away down the right sideline and came away with an 87-yard touchdown. A one-yard TD pass to receiver Dwayne Harris gave New York a 17–10 halftime lead, and after Brady hit Gronkowski with a 76-yard touchdown to go up 24–23 in the fourth quarter, Eli led a 15-play drive that ended in a field goal and produced a 26–24 lead—but again, leaving too much clock, in this case 1:47. Brady squeezed in 12 plays and got his field goal to win 27–26.

Beckham had become more flamboyant in this second year. His hair half-dyed blonde, his post-touchdown gyrations bad Tootsie Rolling, he’d drawn a few fines for taunting. He was still humble enough to take the blame, saying, “I lost the game for us” by not getting himself open enough.³ But the only memorable things about the season were his increasingly bizarre impulses. His ego fed by tons of puff pieces, he had begun to see confrontations with defensive backs as personal wars, sending him careening out of control. This came to a head when the undefeated Panthers, led by the second-biggest show off in the game, Cam Newton, came to MetLife on December 20. Both Newton and the Panthers’ All-Pro cornerback, Josh Gordon, were prone to preening. For the Giants, who still had a long-shot hope of making the playoffs, the game was not unlike the end-of-season Patriots game in ’07, for pride and manhood.

For Beckham, it was almost literally so. The Panthers were said to have latched onto rumors that made their way around the league that he was gay, as if that would matter in any way. Beckham had heard homophobic slurs during games and didn’t have the maturity to ignore them. During pregame warm-ups, Michael Irvin would later say on ESPN, several Panther defensive backs, including Josh Norman, assembled close to where Beckham was putting on his usual pregame show—grabbing long passes one-handed, emulating several catches he had made during games that way, video clips of which were all over the internet. Irvin said a Panthers scrub, defensive back Marcus Ball, carried over a baseball bat and pointed it at Beckham, which was construed as some kind of phallic gesture.

When asked about this, Panthers coach Ron Rivera denied his players engaged in any slurs and said the bat was a common pregame prop—one the league prohibited upon hearing about it. Giants punter Brad Wing agreed that he heard no such slurs before or during the game. But he did say that when Beckham tried to shake Ball’s hand, the latter refused and issued a “legitimate threat,” to wit, “He said he would be the reason Odell would not play, today and other days,” an odd thing for a scrub to say.⁴

Whatever set Beckham off, his sights were on Norman, not his pass routes. Early in the game, he was provoked when Norman body-slammed him to the turf, and no flag was thrown. For nearly the first 42 minutes, he went without a catch. Instead, he and Norman yapped at and grappled with each other. Three times Beckham was flagged for personal fouls, Norman twice. Late in the third quarter, the Giants down big, Beckham stalked Norman, then came at him with a helmet-to-helmet collision. Flags flew and whistles blew, each man penalized, Beckham later fined. Players grabbed and held each other.

Yet the aging Coughlin, who seemed not in control of his own team anymore, never did rebuke Beckham or remove him for even a single play. Attesting to his talent, Beckham wound up with six catches in 15 minutes as Eli, being Eli, mounted a furious comeback. As the two-minute mark approached, down by seven, he hit Beckham with a slant that broke for 40 yards, then hit him from 14 yards out to tie it, 35–35. But Newton quickly got the Panthers into Giant territory, and a last-second field goal ended the game. Afterward, a remorseless Beckham admitted no wrongdoing, but all around him, the questions were about his grand display of monomania. Eli, weaseling out, said of Beckham and Norman, “I don’t think either one was in the right, but I didn’t think one was worse than the other.”⁵

Coughlin even insisted he hadn’t seen the flagrant foul, and that “I will defend the young man, and the quality of the person.”⁶

After the Giants closed out the season again at a listless 6–10, Coughlin was spared further bootlicking. He was canned, his two championships just fading memories. Eli, of course, was as safe as a man could be. He had performed admirably once more, throwing for a career high 4,432 yards, his 35 touchdowns one behind Brady. He had only 14 interceptions, completing 62.6 percent, his 93.6 rating also a career best. He went back to the Pro Bowl for the first time since ’12. But he was stuck on a treadmill, sandbagged by the worst defense in the game, and sacked 27 times due to a leaky line. And after finding Beckham 96 times, 13 for touchdowns, he would face the future knowing the rest of his career would be interlocked with a man who was destined either for the Hall of Fame or a straitjacket. Or both.

Almost 2,000 miles away, Peyton could feel fortunate that he had a defense that prevented that sort of season. But just as obvious was that Peyton was a shadow of the old Manning—the one from the year before. The opening game, against the Ravens, was a gruesome affair, with both teams combining for fewer than 400 total yards, the two quarterbacks throwing three picks and no touchdowns. Manning passed for 175 yards, Joe Flacco 117. But the Broncos won 19–13, using a simple template: swarming defense and a few key passes.

The Broncos continued not scoring much, and after he threw three touchdowns against the Chiefs and two against the Lions, he tailed off, his yardage down and his interceptions way up—11 in the first seven games, all of which were wins. By then, he had sustained rib and foot injuries. Clearly shying from contact, his timing and footwork were out of sync. In an article in the Atlantic, Robert O’Connell believed many of his passes were “torturously slow or misaimed,” and that “he curls and tumbles at the approach of a defensive lineman as if to protect a skeleton made of chalk. . . . Each of his drop-backs triggers a hint of fear, from the viewer if not from the player himself. The words spine and neck linger, and nightmare scenes of paralysis flash. His slow and lanky limbs seem ready to fall apart at the slightest knock.”⁷

ESPN the Magazine piled on with a piece describing a virtual cadaver: “his pale arms and torso are covered in fresh scrapes and old bruises, some the color of strawberries, others a shade of eggplant . . . the crooked pink scar on the back of his neck is still visible. . . . As he slices away at the thick layers of athletic tape supporting his ankles, he looks like a surgeon operating on his own leg without anesthesia. . . . It’s hard not to wonder: How much longer can he possibly keep this up?”⁸ This was a question being asked freely in the media before the 10th game, against the Chiefs. In the first quarter, his first pass was intercepted. Next possession, he was sacked and threw two incomplete passes. Next time, he managed one completion—for one yard. Then he completed another, for 17 yards to Demaryius Thomas, breaking Brett Favre’s record for career passing yardage, before ending the drive with an interception. He would throw two more picks, the last with 9:41 to go in the third quarter. By then he had managed to complete exactly five of 20 passes, for 35 yards; his passer rating was 0.0. The score was 22–0 Chiefs, and the Mile High crowd was booing. That was enough for Kubiak. He benched Manning and went with Osweiler, who heaved 24 passes, completing 14, with a touchdown that brought the final score to 29–14.

Afterward, Peyton was diagnosed with a tear in his plantar fascia near the left heel. “Those last couple games,” Archie confirmed, “he admitted to me that he shouldn’t have been playing.”⁹ Kubiak had to point out that “Peyton is our quarterback.” However, people began to wonder if this was the dawning of the new era of Brock Osweiler. One analyst opined, “Whatever Brock Osweiler is, it’s got to be better than what we’ve seen from Manning.”¹⁰ Osweiler responded well, leading the Broncos to an overtime victory over the Patriots in his second game and throwing three touchdowns against the Steelers in a close 34–27 defeat. He was executing the West Coast offense well, and could be clutch, winning another overtime game against the Bengals. Whether Kubiak ever considered staying with the hot hand, and in effect, letting Manning rot, it looked like the leading passer in NFL history just might exit on that 0.0 game.

Before that question would be resolved, Peyton ran into an added complication. On Saturday, December 26, two days before the Broncos played the Bengals on Monday night, the cable news network Al Jazeera America, a little-watched but highly credible branch of the worldwide Al Jazeera news operation, ran an investigative documentary called The Dark Side: The Secret World of Sports Doping. The indeed-noirish “undercover” report traced the secret doings of a source with the too-perfect name Charlie Sly, a shadowy pharmacist whom the network’s reporter quoted as having been a party to providing an “HGH derivative” to pro athletes that included Manning, Steelers linebacker James Harrison, Packers defensive lineman Julius Peppers, and baseball players Ryan Howard of the Philadelphia Phillies and Ryan Zimmerman of the Washington Nationals. Manning, Sly said, had been supplied during his time as a Colt through the Guyer Institute of Molecular Medicine, a chic, new-age “anti-aging” clinic in Indianapolis.¹¹

Especially coming from a respected news organization that had won numerous awards for its journalism, the accusation was damaging enough; worse was Sly saying the stuff had been mailed to Ashley Manning, and that the couple had visited his clinic after hours for “intravenous treatments.”¹² Waking up to this bombshell, all of the players denied being involved with any such thing, with Peyton the most irate. Going into attack mode, he released a statement reading: “For the record, I have never used HGH. It never happened. The whole thing is totally wrong. It’s such a fabrication,” adding—debatably—“I’m not losing any sleep over it, that’s for sure.”¹³ On Sunday, he told ESPN he was “angry, furious . . . disgusted is really how I feel, sickened by it. . . . [C]omplete trash, garbage. . . . [A] joke, a freaking joke. . . . [T]ime ended up being probably my best medicine, along with a lot of hard work, and that really stings me that whoever this guy is insinuated I cut corners, I broke NFL rules, in order to get healthy.”¹⁴

There were a few things wrong with these heavy-breathing allegations, though they were too complex for many sportswriters to understand. For one thing, the drug in question had little to do with HGH. Rather, it was something called Delta-2, a synthetic steroid precursor, or prohormone, originated for use in breeding elephants, goats, and pigs. As such, it was reminiscent of androstenedione, the prohormone that Mark McGwire had gotten into trouble using during his home run onslaughts of the late 1990s and which was soon banned by sports leagues, as was Delta-2 in 2004. Yet the latter apparently grew so popular in the sports underground that some called it “the new normal” in performance-enhancing drugs, especially since it leaves the bloodstream quickly and makes it harder to detect. But all this was a con, a marketing scheme. In reality, the substance is sold under the counter and on the internet, for as little as $30 a bottle—The Dark Side asserted that one former player had bought out all the online supplies by himself.¹⁵ Yet, because it showed no proven effects other than perhaps making men sprout breasts, the former trainer who had admitted supplying baseball players with PEDs during that scandal investigation said Delta-2 was “like offering tea to a man who needs a stiff drink.”¹⁶

In light of Sly misidentifying the drug, Peyton’s denial of using HGH was perfectly truthful; as was Guyer’s denial he supplied him with it. Manning never would address whether he used prohormones, nor did anyone ask him. Instead, he did admit he had attended the Guyer clinic around 35 times, but only in 2011. He said it was only for its hyperbaric chamber, nutrient therapy, oxygen therapy, “and other treatments that are holistic in nature,” which likely caused a few snickers. In response to the stinging assumption that he was using his wife as his beard for those deliveries, he turned it back onto the reporter, British hurdler Liam Collins, as the lowest possible insult. His jaw tight, his mouth sneering, he went on, “My wife has never provided any medication for me to take,”¹⁷ adding that he was “sick” and “nauseous” that she was “being brought into this.”¹⁸

However, what he didn’t let on was that this news was not a surprise to him. In fact, he had been working his own “undercover” operation for five days, ever since Al Jazeera fact-checkers had sent word to him and the other athletes, informing them of the allegations. After his lawyers hired private investigators, someone at the Guyer clinic ratted out Sly as the source of the allegations, and two undercover dicks went looking for Sly—wearing black suits and overcoats, their aim apparently to intimidate him into recanting his story. They appeared with no warning at the suburban Indianapolis home of Sly’s parents, who later said one of the men told them he was a law enforcement officer, but had no badge. They so unnerved the Slys that they called 911.¹⁹

The “officers” never did find Sly, but knowing they were after him may have led him to do what Manning wanted, because when the program ran, he already had a statement ready, and a YouTube video recanting. Admitting he wasn’t a pharmacist, he nervously said he had “made it up,” never saying why, though his lawyer said, “It was pure puffery. He was manufacturing a story to bolster his own appearance.” Sly went on to say he had never met the Mannings, never saw any of their files, and then confessed that he “was in no state of mind to be making any coherent statements as I was grieving the death of my fiancée.” For what he had wrought, he added, “I feel badly.”²⁰

Both the Colts and Broncos issued their own statements supporting Manning, as did Tom Condon. But the frontal assault on the story and the network—which, predictably, was the target of virulent Islamophobic invective—put Al Jazeera immediately on its heels. Needing to defend its own honor, it also had to defend a scoop that fell apart from the first day, walking the fine line that the report had never actually said Manning had used the drug. And within a few days, Peyton’s freshly hired “crisis management” spokesman, former George W. Bush press secretary Ari Fleischer, quietly acknowledged that Ashley had indeed received “shipments” from the clinic in the mail, citing her right to privacy in not specifying exactly what was shipped, legal or otherwise.

Peyton’s word, of course, was good enough for Archie, who called the story “pretty shabby journalism.” He said his son told him, “I didn’t do that.” He went on, “I always had a saying when he was going through everything and he had to talk to a lot of different doctors and trainers, and I always said, ‘No voodoo.’ That was kind of our theme. And he didn’t. He said he didn’t. He didn’t.” Because Ashley had been dragged into it, Peyton believed that she had been “violated,”²¹ something he or Archie had shown little concern about doing to Jamie Naughright.

Unlike the mooning story, this one took hold, at least for a few days, though the most telling part of it was that, despite some other big names accused, it seemed to only descend upon the one who did all the commercials. The documentary aired to a fair amount of gawking, but there were diminishing returns. Manning spoke of possibly filing a lawsuit against the network and Sly. (Howard and Zimmerman did file one.) He had no reason to worry about a fan or media backlash. Not everyone bought his denial, but even those who didn’t seemed to subscribe to the “everybody does it” school of thought. This was a rather amazing contrast to the Brady Deflategate story, with one internet scribe concluding that the differing response “exposes the Brady haters” as blatant hypocrites, and that it was proof the public was “bored by [the subject of PEDs] and rightly so. I can think of no mystery less interesting than whether an aging athlete with a broken neck used a substance that might not even work to return to a playing field where cortisone injections are given out like chewable Vitamin C tabs. The PEDs debate is over,”²² never mind that players in all sports are routinely suspended for such infractions.

The NFL and Major League Baseball, at least acting as if it were a grave matter, launched investigations; seven months later, the former concluded that there was “no credible evidence” Manning had used HGH or any other PED,²³ the other players shoved aside for later clearances. Since he was retired by then, this too set off a few cackles; after all, what would Roger Goodell have done if the allegations were true—suspend him for four commercials?

Al Jazeera America, meanwhile, didn’t retract the story but stopped defending it. And, perhaps anticipating more lawsuits and with growing internal trouble, it closed up shop in April 2016 after three years on the air. As with the Jamie Naughright scandal, the “HGH” allegation would not completely go away, and the Manning haters would have fun with it. But within the media, and the parochial relationships of the NFL, it was just another minor distraction that legendary men like Peyton Manning ought never to have to endure.

Asked on that first day of the scandal that wasn’t what the effect of the story would be, Peyton had said, “I plan to go throw today a little bit harder. My ball has a little extra heat on it today. I’ve got some built up anger, as you might understand, and I’ll try to do what I can to help the Broncos get a win tomorrow night.” But while he didn’t get into the win over the Bengals, he was more prophetic than he knew. A week later, going into the regular-season finale against the woeful Chargers, the Broncos were 11–4 and needed a win for the top seed in the AFC playoffs.

In that game, Osweiler started hot, throwing a 72-yard touchdown to Demaryius Thomas. But then the Broncos began bumbling, with three fumbles and two interceptions on their next seven drives. An appreciative Chargers squad led 13–7 with eight minutes left in the third quarter. Kubiak now made a providential move. He sat Osweiler and put his dinosaur in. Peyton’s foot and thigh had healed, and he had worked hard in practice to stay ready. And as he said, his arm was angry. On his first drive, he hit on three straight passes to move into Charger territory, and Anderson ran it in from the one to get the lead. Philip Rivers took it back with an 80-yard touchdown pass, Manning maneuvered into position for the tying field goal, then the Chargers fumbled one away and Hillman ran in the game winner. It wasn’t that Manning looked so great; rather, he looked in charge, his acumen uncontested. At this point, that was enough. The defense would do the rest.

For better or worse, he would be under center for the postseason, on a team not geared around him. Chris Harris, for example, had no problem describing the Hall of Fame quarterback’s role as no more than a “game manager.” As Greg Bishop wrote in Sports Illustrated, “He didn’t need to win games so much as he needed not to lose them.”²⁴ That seemed to suit Manning fine. The Broncos placed not a single offensive player on the first-or second-team All-Pro team, for Manning the first time that had happened, other than the season he missed, since 2001. His numbers were painful: 2,249 yards, nine touchdowns, 17 interceptions, 67.9 rating. Osweiler in two fewer games had 10 touchdowns and six interceptions. Yet Manning’s record was 7–2, such was the defense. And the offense did ring up decent running yardage (burnished by 210 yards on the ground in that Charger game), Hillman with 863 yards, Anderson 720. Demaryius Thomas pulled in 105 passes and six touchdowns.

But the defense was bred like hounds from hell to strike first and worry later, coordinated by 68-year-old Wade Phillips, who had twice coached the Broncos. He not only bridged the years between Archie and his son, having been an assistant on Archie’s last Saints team, but had been the defensive coordinator of the teams against whom Peyton had twice set the single-season touchdown record. Under him, the Bronco defense would reach its peak. Von Miller was first-team All-Pro, Talib, Ware, and Harris were on the second team. Still, no one knew quite what to make of the Broncos. They had won seven games with fourth-quarter drives, and were 11–3 in games decided by a touchdown or less, and no other championship team had walked the line of defeat so often. Manning was a sentimental favorite, and so the Broncos were seven-point favorites in their first game against the Steelers, who had beaten the Bengals in a street fight of a wild-card game the week before.

The game in Denver was brass-knuckled from the start. The Steelers lost All-Pro receiver Antonio Brown with a concussion and halfback DeAngelo Williams with a foot injury, but they still led 13–12 entering the fourth quarter. The home crowd had been booing when Manning, with just under 10 minutes left, started on his own 35. On third-and-12, he drilled one deep down the middle to rookie receiver Bennie Fowler for 31 yards. Burning up the clock with runs, with 3:04 left Anderson punched it in and Manning tossed the two-point conversion to Demaryius Thomas. After Ware sacked Ben Roethlisberger on fourth down, a field goal made it 23–13, enough for Denver to withstand a late scare and win 23–16.

It wasn’t pretty, but it was gritty. On one memorable play, Peyton fell to his knees, then got up and fired a 34-yard pass to Sanders. Knowing that the Patriots would be next—the ultimate battle royal for the AFC crown—didn’t help. Already, Peyton was feeling pressure. As Greg Bishop wrote in Sports Illustrated, “When Manning strode into the interview room that narrative had already been established. He felt no need to contribute to it. He answered two questions about Brady and the Patriots without saying the words Brady or Patriots. He wanted to enjoy this win first.”²⁵ When he was given the game ball, having completed 21 of 37 for 222 yards and sacked only once, he in turn gave it to Thomas, whose mother had just been released from prison as a result of a pardon by President Obama.

Said Archie of the victory, “Peyton hasn’t enjoyed the year he’s had in other seasons. But if he had one contribution to getting [Denver] to the Super Bowl, it was what he did that day.”²⁶

The AFC title match was being called “The Last Tango” on the assumption that this, their 17th meeting, would be the last time Manning and Brady squared off. That week, reporters quoted players who had played with both. Adam Vinatieri equated Brady to “a kid on the playground, just does his thing,” as opposed to Manning, “who’s meticulous, almost OCD; I’ve never seen a guy prepare, study that hard. S——, he might as well be the coordinator, the GM and the coach. He may be the smartest player I’ve ever seen.” However, Sports Illustrated’s Jack Dickey ventured that “few seemed to consider his Broncos anything other than the worst team remaining in the playoffs.”²⁷

If so, then all he had to do to was slay the best one. Belichick’s bunch was the usual steamroller, third in scoring, while allowing the 10thfewest points. Not so hot in rushing, but Brady’s passing was unstoppable. At 38, with no signs of aging save for perennially tortoise-slow feet, he had thrown for 4,770 yards, the second most of his career, with a league-best 36 touchdowns, and a microscopic seven interceptions. His rating was 102.2, and he was coming off a two-touchdown, 302-yard playoff win over the Chiefs. His über-weapon, the semi-insane Rob Gronkowski, was the first-team All-Pro tight end for a third time, and managed to stay healthy.

The Broncos needed no motivation. Like practically everyone else outside of New England, defensive end Derek Wolfe said, “I hate everything about them.”

The game, played on a cool, 46-degree afternoon at Mile High, was a brutal back-alley street fight, players bitching and moaning to the officials about non-calls. The Pats, favored by three points, didn’t fool around trying to establish the run; Brady went right to the pass and stayed with it, throwing 56 times. However, while gaining 307 yards, he would complete only 27 of them and was picked off twice. The Broncos had him under thunderous assault. They would sack him four times—two and a half by Von Miller, who seemed shot out of a canon and also intercepted a pass intended for Gronkowski—and make contact with him 23 times, the most by any team in a game all season. Wolfe, playing his best game of the year, had a game-high six tackles.

Even so, this was not enough to slay Brady. Manning threw two touchdowns in the first half to spare receiver Owen Daniels, one up the middle, the other in the corner of the end zone. But he also fumbled deep in his own territory, and the ensuing Pats touchdown kept them close, down 17–9 at the half. Archie, who said he’d made a new year’s resolution to stop biting his nails, wore thick gloves, and he’d need them. The Broncos led 17–12 going to the fourth quarter, and Manning, taking no chances, took what he was given. His stats were mediocre—he completed 17 of 32 for 176 yards, and was sacked three times. He overthrew an open receiver in the end zone. He threw an unwise lateral that fell short and was recovered by the Pats. But he also scrambled once for 12 yards and a first down, looking, wrote Sports Illustrated, like “a giraffe on ice skates.”²⁸ The Pats helped him, too; Gostkowski missed an extra point, something he had not done in a decade, and in the fourth quarter Belichick opted to pass up a field goal to go for it on fourth down. A screen pass to Julian Edelman was snuffed by Chris Harris, despite playing with a bad shoulder.

But with the sputtering Bronco offense unable to kill the clock, with 1:52 left, trailing 20–12, Brady had a last gasp. He drove down the field, hitting Gronkowski for 40 yards on a fourth-and-10. After taking it to the doorstep, on another fourth-and-goal, he found him again in the back of the end zone with a four-yard touchdown, 12 seconds on the clock. Now, needing the two-point conversion to tie and go to overtime, Brady rolled right and lofted it for Edelman at the goal line, where it was tipped by the ex-Pat Talib and grabbed by extra cornerback Bradley Roby. The onside kick failed, and Manning had a storybook ending to his rivalry with Brady.

The huzzahs, however, were rightly for the defense—“La-D-Friggin’-Da,” Sports Illustrated titled its game story. Miller, regaled for having played one of the greatest games ever by a defensive player, said he wasn’t surprised by how the game went, and indeed it was a microcosm of the season. As for Manning, watching him over these last miles, Brett Favre said he looked “sort of un-Peyton like.” In the locker room, the fizzy celebrations seemed built not around the old boy but the younger, louder players, especially the defensive guys, who were the first to claim their preeminent roles. Nearing his end of the line, deep circles under his eyes, he made his way to the interview room, Marshall peeking his head out from behind him. Almost embarrassed at what he couldn’t do, he said, believably, that this one was “special,” “a sweet day,” and “a sweet victory” that would usher him out with a Super Bowl. That he wasn’t the critical factor in the win, he said, was “a great example of what this entire season has been like.”

The last one to leave the locker room, before heading out, he slowly walked back onto the chewed-up field in the basin of the now-deserted, garbage-strewn stadium. The big screen still read, “NEXT GAME: SUPER BOWL 50.” For a few minutes, he stood there, looking around. Then he headed off, a pale shadow of himself, but one with perhaps an ounce of almost palpable magic still left in him.

The climactic encounter of the season was the exact opposite of the Last Tango. Super Bowl 50, as the league billed it—sans Roman numerals—played on February 7 in Santa Clara’s Levi’s Stadium, would match the quarterback on the way out with the one on the way up. Cam Newton had run and passed the Panthers to its near-perfect record and the MVP trophy, and so the themes of the match wrote themselves: New versus old, brash versus stoic, black versus white, mustang versus army mule, dab versus drab. Peyton Manning, the oldest quarterback to start a Super Bowl, found himself not a Bolshevik but a Borgia, though one clad in an outdated preppy suit costing a fraction of Newton’s $900 zebra-print Versace jeans. The backstory was that Newton, the Heisman winner and the first pick of the ’11 draft, had in his first NFL game thrown for 422 yards, smashing Peyton’s first-game record by 120 yards. He had by now already been named All-Pro thrice, this year as the first-team choice, passing for 3,837 yards and 35 touchdowns and running for 636 yards and 10 touchdowns. No other quarterback came near his buffet of talent, and the bettors made his team a quick six-point favorite.

On closer inspection, however, the Panthers were right in the wheelhouse of the Broncos’ mobile, wily defense. The Panthers had amassed the most points in the league, but the Broncos zeroed in on what made it all work: Newton’s arm and legs, but just as much his head. He had fine pieces around him, like All-Pro halfback Jonathan Stewart, tight end Greg Olsen, as well as Josh Norman at corner, linebackers Luke Kuechly and Thomas Davis, and defensive tackle Kawann Short. Another, fullback Mike Tolbert, defined the team’s creed. “If you don’t want us to have fun,” he said during the week, “stop us.”²⁹ Taking that dare, the Broncos’ plan was to swarm Newton, angling him off outside so he couldn’t get wide, while pouring through the middle; when the Panthers had to double up on blocks, alleys would open up for the blitzers, mainly Miller. That, in turn, would require a receiver or back to stay in and block, leaving a path for a safety corner to blitz—Wade Phillips’s “green dog” blitz package. Newton ran a flowing offense, with complex zone-reading option plays. Disrupt it, the thinking went, and chaos would ensue. Newton had little playoff experience and, high-strung as he was, he might even melt down.

Manning’s job would be to take good field position, get a lead, and play ball control. But, true to form, he was pulling rank during the team’s preparations. After they arrived in Santa Clara, he tried to have Kubiak set a curfew. Said Peyton, “I threw out 9 (p.m.) and that didn’t get a lot of (positive) reviews.”³⁰ But while the curfew was set at 10, most things ran on Peyton Time. Save for Newton, he was the most interviewed player during the media crush, sitting down with everyone from the network guys to Snoop Dogg, who asked him if he got a discount at Papa John’s pizzerias. “Absolutely,” he said. And he was the same old ornery Manning when he swatted down Mark Kiszla for bringing up Super Bowl XLVIII.

“I was having such a good day,” he hissed. “Thanks for bringing up a bad memory.”³¹

The night before the game, he and DeMarcus Ware got up to address the team, both with such fire that Miller said later he wanted to “run onto the field and hit someone right there.”³² During warm-ups, when a wheeled stage to be used by Lady Gaga in a pregame concert was rolled across the field, it nearly struck Manning. A roadie yelled through a bullhorn to get out of the way; Peyton shouted back, nearly getting into a fight with the guy. As for whether it would be his last game, he said he wouldn’t talk about it until it was over, but the die was cast. Linebacker Brandon Marshall predicted as much, adding, “I want to win for Peyton.”

The whole Manning clan rolled into town, the last big-game reunion they might ever have, and Olivia made no bones about hoping her little “Peytie Pie” would walk away from the game thereafter. In fact, the night before the Patriot game, SI reported, “Archie and Olivia took a moment. Their eyes welled with tears as they acknowledged what Peyton refused to say publicly, even on Sunday night: that the game could be his last. Archie hugged his wife and said, ‘Hey, this really has been fun with this guy. Let’s see what happens.’”³³

What happened was that, when the whistle blew in Santa Clara, Manning played as if already retired. The first drive of the game, the Broncos kicked a field goal. Then, over seven drives, the offense had four first downs and gained 38 yards; three drives actually lost yardage. Manning, aided by Hillman’s 34-yard run, had the ball on the Panther 24, looked for Sanders short, but defensive tackle Kony Ealy dropped back into coverage and picked it off—Manning’s fourth career Super Bowl pick, tying Elway’s dubious record. And still, at the half they led 13–7, the defense saving his fairy tale. Miller had sacked and stripped Newton, sending the ball squirting into the end zone, where tackle Malik Jackson covered it for a 10–0 lead. Tackle Darian Stewart then separated Tolbert from the ball, and linebacker Danny Trevathan fell on it. In the third quarter, with the ball on the Denver 28, Newton rushed a throw for Ted Ginn that was picked off by T. J. Ward.

Manning, meanwhile, was working on a string of misery, converting exactly one of 14 third-down situations and being sacked five times. The fact was, the best ex-Vol on the field this day was the kicker, Britton Colquitt. Yet Newton was just as inept, and the Broncos had padded the lead to 16–7 by the fourth quarter. Peyton gave the Panthers an opening when, sacked by Ealy, he fumbled. The Panthers got a field goal out of it, but, minutes later, Miller again swooped into the backfield, reached in, and hit Newton’s arm as he threw. The ball came loose and rolled around near Newton’s shoes. He seemed to be deciding whether or not to fall on it when a pile swarmed, with Ward finally grabbing it at the four. A minute later, after a defensive holding call on Norman in the end zone, Anderson ran it over to ice the game.

Then came the last pass Peyton Manning ever completed: for two yards, to Bennie Fowler, making the two-point conversion that made the final score 24–10. In the end, he was 13 of 23 for 141 yards, with no touchdowns. His passer rating for the game was a sickly 56.6—but even that was better than Newton, who went 18 of 41 for 265 yards, had two fumbles, was sacked a Super Bowl record seven times, and had a rating of 55.4, third-worst of all time in the big game. Messing with Newton’s head had all but demobilized the Panther offense. In the Broncos’ historically dominant defensive performance, Miller had two and a half sacks, propelling him to the game’s MVP and appearances in postseason TV commercials, but Ealy tied a Super Bowl record with three. Even two dumb penalties by a near-out-of-control Talib, for taunting and grabbing an opponent’s face mask, didn’t hurt.

As it had been all along, the fairy tale was the story. Elway had gotten a lot of mileage out of what he said he had told Manning when he signed with the Broncos, that he would do “everything in my power to make sure you finish your career the way I finished mine,” and though Peyton limped across the finish line, Elway had delivered. Manning was one of a dozen quarterbacks to win two rings, the same number Eli has. And of course, he was now the only quarterback to win with two teams. All in all, not a bad day’s work. In the afterglow, the cameras zoomed in on Peyton as he met with Newton, who wept on the bench and whose anger and shame would come spurting out minutes later in the interview room, ruining his manufactured sunny image. As the bedlam of the celebration proceeded on the field, Peyton held both Marshall and Mosley, who clung to him around his neck. He lifted the Lombardi Trophy above his head and waved around a cap reading “Super Bowl Champions.” There was some sheepishness in his postgame comments, but the overwhelming emotion was simple relief, rivaling that of the anxiety-ridden Archie, who had been as reluctant as the pickle-pussed Eli to celebrate upstairs until the last second ticked away, as if something truly terrible could still take it away.

Peyton wasn’t so emotional that he forgot a few duties he had agreed to perform for corporate benefactors. When CBS’s Tracy Wolfson corralled him and asked, “Is this your final game for your career?” he gushed, without shame, “I’m going to drink a lot of Budweiser tonight, Tracy, I promise you that,” mentioning the brand of suds again for good measure. When he saw John Schnatter, the equally shameless owner of Papa John’s, in the mob on the field—Peyton having arranged for his VIP field pass—he went over and planted a highly visible kiss on his cheek. Now his day was complete.

In the interview room, trying to ignore the stinging irony that his biggest win came with one of the worst games he had ever played, he acknowledged, “This has been an emotional week, an emotional night, and I’ve got a couple of priorities. I want to go kiss my wife, kiss my kids, and I want to go drink a lot of beer. Von Miller’s buying.” Like an Oscar winner, he went through a litany of acknowledgments, thanking “coaches, family members, and friends” for standing by him, making him believe he could get here again. “I do not take this for granted,” he allowed. “I know how difficult it is. I’m very grateful and I’m very appreciative.”³⁴

After putting his preppy blue blazer and orange tie back on, he met up with Archie in the hall outside. He and the old man embraced, grabbing each other tight for a moment—a moment 40 years in the making—before they broke and the son gave the father a quick pat on the back. It was all that was needed to express from deep within thoughts rarely spoken by either man, both of them bred in the old South, where real men weren’t permitted to get mushy or reveal weakness. The kind of gesture Archie had never shared with Buddy Manning. But for father and son, no matter the twisting, jarring culture collisions of the past four decades, the glue that had kept them bonded was the unstated truth that they were still what they were born as: kinsmen.

The CEO of Manning Inc. went into the night a winner, with a joyous requiem shared by everyone except the Peyton-haters across the social media. One Patriots website cheeked, “Congrats to P.M. on his 2nd Super Bowl victory, and officially becoming half as good as Tom Brady.”³⁵ Another: “I don’t have to pretend that it’s heartwarming to see Manning and his size-12-head limp his way to the title, after a long career of wiping his ass on trainers’ faces and [having] HGH delivered to his doorstep. And I won’t have to watch him ruin what ought to be a touching and genuine sports moment with subliminal mentions of shitty beer and even shittier pizza.”³⁶

Indeed, the mooning incident still had legs. A women’s group called for Manning’s corporate sponsors to ax him from the commercials.³⁷ At the same time, six more former Tennessee coeds sued the school for mishandling recent complaints of sexual assaults—and dropped in his name for historical context, which university lawyers moved to strike in order to “protect his name.”³⁸

Down in New Orleans, however, none of this mattered. Tony Reginelli, who had watched the game from his hospital bed after back surgery, couldn’t believe it when he got home a few days later and there was a box on the doorstep. “My son brought it in, we opened it up, and there was a gorgeous hanger that looked like it must’ve cost around forty dollars itself. Then he pulled out an NFL carrying case, unzipped it and there was this beautiful Broncos jacket with ‘world champions’ on it. I said, ‘C’mon, man,’ couldn’t believe it. With all that was goin’ on out there, he found time to send this beautiful jacket to me. Well, that’s Peyton. He remembers. He remembers people who were there along the way. It made me feel so great that he would think of me. And I haven’t put it on. It hangs in a special place.”³⁹

The only thing left now was his retirement announcement. Keeping mum about the subject during the victory parade through downtown Denver on Tuesday, he left it dangling. His natural penchant for teasing the media reflected the feelings he had always had when the bumps and bruises from the season began to heal and he got that old itch in his arm. Elway once again told him to take his time. But unlike the last time he dispensed that advice, Elway had no intention of signing him. His hope was now pinned on Osweiler, whose contract had run out but was assumed to be eager to re-sign so he could take the reins of the offense. But the delay led some to think Manning just might come back again for a farewell lap. And he did give it some thought, though he knew Elway and Bowlen wanted him to quit—and do it before March 9, when, if he passed a physical, the Broncos would owe him another $19 million. He could have made things sticky for them, and himself, since Elway would have pulled an Irsay and coldly cut him a day before the deadline. And finding yet another team to rent him for a year would be . . . a challenge.

He made it easy on everyone. On Saturday, March 6, after Peyton had spoken with Elway and Kubiak, Broncos president Joe Ellis released a statement making it official, saying how proud the team was “to have called Peyton Manning our quarterback.” Only hours later, they made Osweiler a big-time offer of $13 million a year for three seasons. When Manning called Irsay, the owner who had jilted him felt him out about signing a one-day contract so he could retire as a Colt. But the next morning, he was in Denver, standing in his blue suit and tie, giving his final valedictory address. He took a few questions from the press—one about the new court motions in the Tennessee sexual abuse scandals. Then, with executives and a collection of former teammates that included Jeff Saturday in the front rows, he began a prepared, 15-minute speech.

His words were sprinkled with humor—he tweaked Von Miller for taking time from Dancing with the Stars to be there—and he choked up as he went along. He recalled shaking Johnny Unitas’s hand once. “He told me, ‘Peyton, you stay at it. I’m pulling for you.’ Well, I have stayed at it. I’ve stayed at it for 18 years. . . . I have fought the good fight and I have finished the race. I have kept the faith.” Among the things he said he would miss were the handshakes with Brady, “steak dinner at St. Elmo’s after a win . . . Demaryius Thomas telling me that he loved me and thanking me for coming to Denver after every touchdown I threw to him . . . recapping the game with my dad. And checking to see if the Giants won and calling Eli as we’re both on our team buses.” He spoke of facing “a whole new world of possibilities,” but “you don’t have to wonder if I’ll miss it. Absolutely. Absolutely I will.”⁴⁰ Just before he stepped off the stage, he uttered, “Omaha.” Then he left. All he would say about his future was that he would “consider all possibilities.”

Cooper could sense his brother’s unease. “You know, it’s such a weird thing,” he said. “Think about being 40 and saying, ‘Now I need to go find out what I’m going to be when I grow up.’ It’s a great position to be in, but it’s also kind of peculiar because you don’t really know what to do.” One of his old teammates, Marshall Faulk, ventured, “I think there is a small chance he’ll coach, there is a great chance he’ll run a team, and there is a very high chance him and his family will own a team.”⁴¹

The most logical route was to the broadcast booth. Offers started coming in right after the Super Bowl, but he demurred; it was just too easy. If the past quarter century had proved anything, it was that he needed not a cushion but a chance to rewrite some history.

A few weeks later, he went to Indianapolis for a second retirement speech. In early June, the Broncos were feted at the White House by the lame-duck President Obama, the old Bush ally as gracious as any Southern white boy could be to a Democrat commander-in-chief. A week later, the players got their rings. By then, the Broncos were already feeling the pinch of Manning’s retirement. Osweiler stunned them by walking, signing a ridiculous four-year, $72 million contract with the Texans, who would deeply regret it almost immediately. That forced Elway to draft a quarterback in the first round: Memphis’s Paxton Lynch. With the offense in the hands of former seventh-round draft pick Trevor Siemian in the meantime, the defense couldn’t get the team to the playoffs in 2016. This sent Elway on a new mission of salvation: trying in vain to sweet-talk another old warhorse, Tony Romo, who had been released by the Cowboys. Such desperation was the toll Elway was paying for banking everything on winning right away at the expense of the long term, the quotidian decisions of which rubbed the glow off the Lombardi Trophy for almost everyone except Peyton Manning. His race was done, and won.