Peyton Manning a Cheerleader for His Brother
Peyton Manning spends most of his time in the Indianapolis Colts’ weight room now, in a desperate race to rehabilitate from the neck injury that cost him the 2011 season and could imperil his career. That was where he watched the Giants’ run to the Super Bowl, an extremely well-informed fan with an extremely deep rooting interest.
Manning watches football differently than most people do, of course. Even though his brother Eli is the Giants’ starting quarterback, Peyton watches the defense, as he would if he were studying game film, perhaps the most analytical quarterback in history gleaning secrets, then comparing notes with Eli. They had discussed, for instance, the defense the San Francisco 49ers ran on Eli’s fourth-quarter touchdown strike on a post pattern to Mario Manningham last Sunday.
But Peyton is like many other fans in one way: he is reluctant to mess with karma. After lifting weights while watching the Giants defeat the Atlanta Falcons in their wild-card playoff game, he returned to the same spot a week later to view the Giants’ upset of the Green Bay Packers.
That created a quandary for the N.F.C. championship game.
“I was a little nervous,” Peyton Manning said in a telephone interview Monday night about attending the game in San Francisco. “They played so well against Atlanta, I said, ‘I’ve got to go to the weight facility during the Green Bay game.’ It was a Sunday afternoon. I was the only one in the building. So I was nervous about going to the game.
“I didn’t want him to say, ‘You’ve got to go to the weight room.’ It would have been 9 p.m. in Indianapolis. So I came without telling him. I didn’t want to bother him. I was relieved when they won because I didn’t want him to blame me.”
The Giants did win, beating the 49ers, 20-17, in overtime to advance to the Super Bowl. And Peyton Manning was there to watch it, getting his own tickets, arranging his own travel, one of the country’s most recognizable athletes essentially sneaking into the stadium.
Peyton had long ago stopped watching Eli’s games. He made that decision after he found himself one day — with the Giants playing a 1 p.m. game and the Colts scheduled for that night — standing on his hotel bed screaming at a referee who had just made a bad call and a receiver who had just dropped a pass.
“I’d feel like I’d already played a game and I hadn’t even gotten to our locker room yet,” Peyton said. “I have to leave the games now if the announcer says something I don’t agree with. I’m thinking, ‘Peyton, it is not healthy to be all worked up before a game.’ ”
This season, though, no longer burdened with his own preparation, Peyton was able to watch again. It has been a career season for Eli, who steadied the Giants when the defense struggled early.
Peyton, though, clearly does not like that description much. He has long been protective of Eli — after Tiki Barber took shots at Eli in 2007 and Eli fired back, Peyton pulled a visiting reporter aside in the Colts’ locker room to ask how Eli’s remarks were being received in New York.
To say that Eli is having his finest season suggests to his brother a belief that Eli, now in his eighth year, has been less than stellar until now. So Peyton, so astute at noticing the slightest twitch by a defender, is reluctant to say that Eli may be doing anything different now.
“I’m probably more of the type I don’t really think there has been much change,” Peyton said. “Everybody made a huge deal out of the interceptions last year. From what I saw last year and talking to him and watching game film of him last year — because we played the N.F.C. East — I thought he played well last year.
“Interceptions have their own story; nobody wants to hear it. The truth of it is a lot of things played a role in it — timing with the receivers, tipped balls. At the end of the year, when they don’t make the playoffs, even though they won one more last year than this year, they say 25 interceptions, that’s why they didn’t make the playoffs. Now it’s easy to say he’s made changes, but I’m probably more of a type to say he did pretty doggone good last year.”
Peyton will leave it to others to note that Eli seems to have improved his movement in the pocket this season, refining an ability to slide away from pressure while keeping his gaze downfield.
Still, Peyton points to the workouts that Eli organized at Hoboken High School during the lockout last spring as critical to the way the Giants’ offense has clicked this season. Eli had told Peyton he was sorry to see tight end Kevin Boss and receiver Steve Smith sign elsewhere when free agency finally began after the lockout ended. But Eli had organized workouts with the receivers he knew would be around.
Peyton, who ran similar workouts in Indianapolis until he required neck surgery, said they reminded him of summer workouts in college, when coaches are not allowed around players. The workouts afford the quarterback and his receivers freedom to work as much on one pattern as they want, with no coaches telling them they have to move on to something else.
Eli, like Peyton, homes in on a few weaknesses in his game he wants to work on each off-season. Both have benefited from playing in the same offensive systems their entire N.F.L. careers, allowing them to focus on the tweaks that elevate a quarterback from good to dominant.
“I can’t tell you the impact that makes,” Peyton said. “The fact that he and Kevin Gilbride have been together, it can’t help but get you better. You know the plays so much better. You know where your third read is going to be. The biggest challenge is just getting on the same page. And they have really formed something special in a short period of time. Hakeem Nicks and Mario Manningham — Eli told me he felt early on, they were feeling each other out. But he and Victor Cruz have gotten it so fast. You don’t usually see it that quick — it takes a few years. That has certainly helped.”
Peyton continued: “There’s a reason Eli and Gilbride have been together for so long, because Gilbride has called good plays and Eli has played well. Me and Tom Moore earned the right to stay together. It’s a compliment to Eli and Gilbride. If you call good plays and it’s working, they shouldn’t want to fire you.”
And that, in turn, might have produced the most critical change in the Giants’ offense this season — throwing downfield aggressively. According to statistics compiled by ProFootballFocus.com, Manning is second only to the New Orleans Saints’ Drew Brees in the number of yards in the air his completions have traveled. Brees’s passes traveled 3,112 yards in the air; Manning’s have gone 2,891 yards.
“Eli has always thrown the deep ball; there is no distance he can’t throw,” Peyton said. “Cruz and Nicks can go. If they get one on one, the defense knows that. And because the defense worries about that, they give up the underneath throw.”
This will be an odd two weeks for Peyton Manning. The Super Bowl is being played in Indianapolis largely because of him. The Colts would almost certainly never have been popular enough to merit building a gleaming downtown stadium fit for a Super Bowl if he had not been a Colt. And now, nobody knows how much longer he will be one.
In the meantime, he is playing the delighted host, scrambling to procure enough game tickets and make restaurant reservations for his brother. He will be at the game, hoping his brother can win another Super Bowl — one more than Peyton has won.
But the Colts are in the midst of upheaval, sending Manning’s longtime friends and associates packing, with a new coach likely to be named this week. Manning, 35, had no medical update on his neck, but he continues to rehabilitate, with critical decisions on his future still to be made.
“It’s a strange time around here, with all the coaches getting let go,” Manning said. “I guess that’s somewhat normal for a lot of teams, but it hasn’t happened around here much. I’ve been in the facility every day rehabbing, and everybody in the building is walking around on eggshells because nobody knows who is going to get fired next.
“It’s not the kind of environment you like to be in. It was fun to get out of town.”
And to escape into his brother’s happiness for a few hours.
