Mann, enough
D ENVER — You watched him labor mightily to play a position he once could have played in his sleep, and when it was over, Peyton Manning, a 2413 loser to Andrew Luck and the Colts, wondered aloud along with everyone else whether he will ever throw another pass.
He began talking about his disappointment following his ninth playoff oneanddone, adding, “I need to process this game,” when someone asked: “So it’s not immediately ‘I AM coming back.’ ”
“I guess I just can’t give that simple answer. I can’t say that. I could not say that,” Manning said.
He came to Denver three years ago following the four neck surgeries and a painful divorce from Jim Irsay’s Colts to deliver a championship, to win his second Super Bowl, and he goes home instead while Luck is on the fast track to stardom and to an AFC Championship showdown with Tom Brady.
Manning goes home with the sobering reminder Father Time never shows any mercy, that whether your name is Derek Jeter or Peyton Manning, the bill comes due, there is a price to be paid.
Manning, the aging pitcher who lost the accuracy on his fastball, looked the way quarterbacks two months shy of their 39th birthday are expected to look, and it was sad to watch, and sad to listen to the boobirds who similarly showed him no what have you-done foruslately? mercy.
When you are two months shy of your 39th birthday, the thigh injury you keep waiting to go away never really goes away.
“It kind of hung around, felt good with it coming into the game today,” Manning said.
He finished 26for46 for 211 yards and a touchdown on his opening possession, but 59 yards came in Garbage Time at the end.
“Not good enough, didn’t play well enough,” Manning said.
Same story with the second half of the season.
“I didn’t play well consistently in the second half of the season,” Manning said. “I can’t give you a reason for that.”
The old gunslinger tried to win the game with his beautiful mind, but he was slow on the draw and mostly out of bullets anyway.
“I’ve always taken a pretty accurate look and fair evaluation of myself,” Manning said. “I think I’m as honest with myself as anybody else is and probably as critical of myself as anybody else is.”
He lost a fumble on a strip sack and overthrew receivers five times, as if he were trying to convince himself he still had the arm. He secondguessed himself on at least two of them.
“Those were my decisions,” Manning said.
There was one time, thirdand5 at his 25, when Manning had a vast expanse of grass in front of him and threw incomplete to Demaryius Thomas out of bounds instead. Meanwhile, Luck (27for43, 265 yards, two TDs, two INTs) was tormenting the Broncos with his gift of extending plays.
Manning’s playoff record is 1113 and if this proves to be the last time we see him, he won’t be remembered as the Greatest Of All Time, unless you believe he can return and somehow become the oldest quarterback to win a Super Bowl.
Colts defensive tackle Ricky Jean Francois was asked what the secret had been against Manning.
“Get him off his point. Get him frustrated. Get in his head,” he said. “A few times, ’cause he was frustrated, we’ve seen him overthrow his receivers by 3, 4 yards. So that means he’s still got the arm strength, but the thing that shocked me was, he couldn’t put the ball on the money, put it RIGHT on that number. That’s what you’ve always known him for, all the receiver’s gotta do is open his hand, that ball’s gonna drop. ... We kept saying, ‘That’s blood in the water.’
“We knew we couldn’t let him be the Hall of Fame quarterback today.”
This was what Irsay envisioned three years ago, when it was time to say goodbye to Manning, and anoint Luck as the next legendary Colts quarterback: the young lion growing swiftly into King of Beasts, feasting one day on the aging King of the NFL. Rocky Horror Picture Show at Mile High.
“I knew it was the right thing to do for the Colts,” Irsay said. “Emotionally, it was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do. In professional football, it’s about winning, and you have to be able to make the decisions that are best for the franchise.”
Luck will soon win a Super Bowl, maybe more than one. Peyton Manning may be stuck on one forever.