SUPER SHOWDOWN
Newton, Manning chasing prize
The National Football League cuts off player interviews on Thursday of Super Bowl week for the very good reason that there is nothing left to ask, or say.
The conversation that opened Monday has circled back around on itself and begun to eat its own tail.
Cam Newton snaps at another question about why he still wears the hospital wrist band from his December, 2014 car crash. Peyton Manning sags visibly when asked to compare this Super Bowl to others he has been in.
And we are back where we were the day Newton’s Carolina Panthers and Manning’s Denver Broncos won their conference championship games: a study in contrasts nowhere more stark than at quarterback, where the protagonists are so profoundly at odds, they might as well be from different planets.
There are pronouncements that come from Cam Newton’s mouth that you couldn’t drag out of Peyton Manning with a team of oxen. Manning’s folksy humility — “I love Saturday, because the hay’s in the barn,” he said of the week’s preparations — may be all about image, and if truth were known, his ego might be every bit as outsized as that of the Panthers’ dancing, mugging exhibitionist; he just hides it better.
Newton has no interest in hiding a thing. He is a 6- foot- 5, 250- pound, sculpted Adonis who named his son Chosen. He is aggressively building a “brand” based on this one spectacular season ( 17- 1 so far) that is equal parts performance, personality and unapologetic showmanship.
His teammates and coaches insist this is the real Newton, that there’s nothing fake about him.
His critics have trouble seeing a single thing about him — between plays, anyway — that doesn’t look contrived.
Some argue that Newton acts the way he does because he knows he has to strike while the iron is hot; because even now, all these decades after the issue was supposedly put to bed, the black quarterback still doesn’t have the same safety net as his white counterpart. How quickly might it all go away if the Panthers were to lose Sunday, or become an ordinary team again?
Manning has no such worries. His legacy is secure; it could be enhanced by a second Super Bowl win, sure, or diminished a hair by a third loss, but as his boss, John Elway says: “This is not a make- or- break game for Peyton. He’s already going to go down as one of the greatest players to ever play the game.”
The tributes to Manning sound a little like a eulogy, and perhaps that’s what they will turn out to be, for a 39- year- old who’s headed for post- career hip replacement, with a worn- out arm and only his wits and experience left to sink or swim with Sunday.
“My arm is what it is,” Manning said. “My arm has not been the same since I got injured four years ago. I had a neck injury that caused nerve problems in my right arm.
“My high school coach used to tell me when you’re sprinting left it’d be easier if you could throw left handed if you were amphibious — I think he meant ambidextrous,” he smiled. “I’ve worked hard to sort of manage with the physical limitations and have gotten to a place where I think I can be effective, and that’s where it is.”
Not that he doesn’t still burn to win another title.
“You’d have to ask him,” said Broncos tackle Ryan Harris, “but I can only imagine when your brother is sitting across from you at Thanksgiving and he’s got two Super Bowl rings and you only have one, can’t be a good feeling.”
Said Denver receiver Emmanuel Sanders: “If this is Peyton’s last game we got to let him ride off into the sunset.”
Even Carolina cornerback Josh Norman, an Indy Colts fan growing up, is smitten.
“Oh man, I couldn’t have asked for a better opponent in the biggest game of my life,” Norman said. “Playing against a guy like that is ... I’m speechless.”
Newton, at this stage of his career, can only hope to bank enough great seasons that he is so warmly regarded one day.
“A lot of things that Peyton has done, is doing, I wish I could mimic, but I can’t do it like Peyton can,” the 26- year- old Newton said. “I try to translate things I learned from him or have seen him do or other quarterbacks do and apply it to my own game.”
Manning could teach him plenty, but probably wishes he had what Newton has: athletic brilliance, a rocket arm and, it seems, boundless confidence in his ability to win the big game.
In its place, Manning has the same self- deprecating humour that’s in his TV commercials.
“Well, I don’t run any touchdowns ( like Newton), for one thing. I promise if I run a touchdown on Sunday, I will celebrate,” he said.
“I doubt I’ll get to run that much, though, because of the 12yard run that I had against New England. There’s a good chance Carolina may send someone to spy me. I could see it happen.”
He got a big laugh. He may not get the last one.