Expect a Manning in full

should be slow to hyperventilate, with so many metaphors and adjectives already spent on John Elway and Tim Tebow.

While the Falcons have seldom faced the NFL’s only four-time MVP, a few of their number import valuable experience from elsewhere.

‘Ain’t missed a beat’

Like a dreadlocked shaman, 13-year veteran linebacker Mike Peterson sits in one corner of the locker room dispensing wisdom. Gather ’round, and he will tell you what hell comes this way.

“They really don’t know,” said Peterson, referring to those younger Falcons around him. “I’ve told guys about it, still they don’t actually have a grasp for how much of a pro [Manning] is. As much as I tell ’em, they won’t have a sense of it until they get out on the field. Then it’s like, ‘Whoa, he’s on it tonight.’ If a guy is open, Peyton is going to find him.”

A former teammate of Manning’s in Indianapolis (1999-2002), then a twicea-year antagonist in Jacksonville (2003-2008), Peterson has an advanced degree in this subject. What he saw in Manning’s return with a new team and a newly fused neck last Sunday night was vintage. Even against Pittsburgh, last season’s No. 1ranked defense, Manning completed 73 percent of his passes and orchestrated three 80-yard touchdown drives.

The Falcons, Peterson said, are getting a Manning in full: “He ain’t missed a beat. Knowing the competitor that he is and the type of work he puts in, I wasn’t expecting anything less.”

At 36, Manning is still the ubiquitous pitchman, cutting more commercials than the talking gecko and Mike Rowe combined.

He is a star on Saturday night. Remember the 2007 appearance on “Saturday Night Live,” and the hilarious parody of his squeaky clean image and of the league’s numerous United Way commercials? “I’ll kill a snitch. I’m not saying I have; I’m not saying I haven’t, you know what I mean?” he tells a stunned young fan in one scene.

He is a star on Monday night, with an 11-3 record as the pitcher of record on that bright stage.

And in between, he has done enough with his Sundays to stand third all-time in career passing yards, touchdowns and completions. Manning is one away from breaking or sharing the NFL record for 300-yard passing games and fourth-quarter game-winning drives, neither of which the Falcons care to accommodate.

He is the meticulously prepared player who is long past the stage of feeling any doubt or nerves.

“Pressure is something you feel when you don’t know what the hell you’re doing,” he has said.

Just as he is the mustwatch player for any young quarterback who wants to grow up to be anything special. “Every one turns on the tape and tries to learn something from him,” said the Falcons’ Matt Ryan.

Paying special attention, he said, to the way Manning directs a game at the line of scrimmage, doing the Hokey Pokey before every snap in order to signal his guys into the right play against the given defense. (There is a league rule designed to limit a quarterback’s gyrations while in the shotgun. Oddly, Ryan already has been flagged for a violation, but not Manning).

Of the soliloquy of signals Manning barks out at the line, Peterson noted, “He’ll say a whole paragraph out there and one word will mean something.”

“Most of the time you probably won’t have any clue what he’s doing,” said Falcons cornerback Asante Samuel, who began his career in New England, Manning’s thorniest rival while in Indy. “We are kind of just waiting for the ball to snap.”

What’s defense to do?

Thus the question: What can the Falcons possibly throw at such a savvy sort Monday night that he won’t be ready for?

“Good question. I think he has seen most everything,” said the Falcons defensive coordinator, Mike Nolan.

Manning is a coordinator’s white whale, the great challenge that could border on obsession. As a head coach or coordinator, Nolan is 1-6 against the Indianapolis Colts version of Manning. And here he is now, down one Pro Bowl-caliber cornerback due to the seasonending injury to Brent Grimes. Manning, after all, is as opportunistic as he is skilled ( Jets coach Rex Ryan once declared, “When you struggle against Peyton Manning, he will eat you alive.”)

“Nowadays, the really good quarterbacks play the game against the co- ordinators as much as the players they are going against,” Nolan said. “Peyton has been very good at that.”

There’s the buildup. There are the drum beats to the league’s most stirring comeback story. So, then, how exactly do you fight all that? How do you bring down Manning? After all, he has not gone 13 seasons undefeated. He’s just 142-67, that’s all.

There exists proof that he can be had. Falcons defensive end John Abraham was on the 2002 New York Jets team that handed Manning his only shutout (41-0 in the postseason).

Peterson’s defenses in Jacksonville routinely hectored Manning. The Jags beat him 44-17 in 2006, the Colts’ Super Bowl-winning season. In one 2005 game, won by the Colts 10-3, they held Manning to 122 passing yards with one interception (by Peterson, and he has the ball at home to prove it).

“You’ve got to change the look-up and you got to be patient on defense,” Peterson recommended. “Peyton is one of those guys who’s going to dictate the play he gets his offense in off what you show him. You tip your hand early, he’s going to put his guys in a favorable place every time.”

Added Samuel, on the importance of trying to confuse Manning before the snap: “I think that will be very important, holding the disguise so we don’t give away our coverage. We want to make him figure it out on the run.”

To blitz or not to blitz is a particularly ticklish proposition against Manning, who is most adept at reading the rush, reacting and making defenses pay for the added pressure.

“You need to blitz, and you need not to,” Nolan said. “If you just show up and do one thing, you better be better than all his guys, because otherwise it doesn’t work. I don’t know of a team today good enough on defense to do that to any good quarterback.”

“You can’t say we’re going to blitz the heck out of him. You can’t come in and say we’re going to sit back,” Peterson said. “You got to play that chess game with him.”

Who else moves the pieces better than Manning? Nolan will say of the modern pool of quarterbacks, “there are more of the really good ones than there ever have been.”

The Falcons have a rare appointment with the master Monday night.