When Peyton Manning parted company with the Indianapolis Colts after 14 seasons with that franchise, it didn’t seem possible that he could deliver a more touching and eloquent exit speech.
He was humble, appreciative, respectful and stunningly gracious given the fact that the Colts were basically cutting him at the physical low point of his career. If anyone needed reminding that the NFL, like most billion-dollar businesses, can be a cold, heartless, unemotional enterprise, that March 7 day in 2012 was it.
But as amazing as that departure was, Manning’s Monday retirement from an 18-year career that may never be equaled was better. It was, as one might expect from Peyton, pretty much perfect in every way.
If you were one of those thousands, if not millions of Tennessee Volniacs who have hung on his every accomplishment since he arrived in Knoxville in 1994, you couldn’t help but feel a tear or two welling in your eyes over the following statement:
“Almost 19 years ago to the day, I announced my decision to forgo the draft and stay at the University of Tennessee for my senior year. It was one of the smartest decisions I’ve ever made. I cherished my time in Knoxville, especially my senior year. And I want Vols fans everywhere to know the unique role that you’ve played in my life.”
If you’re a professional sports fan made irritable by how little today’s current players seem to admire and appreciate their predecessors, Manning recalled a trip to Baltimore his rookie season:
“I had met him once before, but when the game was over I had the chance to shake Johnny Unitas’ hand. 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 and I hope that old No. 19 (Unitas) is up there with his flat top and maybe his black high tops on, and I hope he knows that I have stayed at it, and maybe he’s even a little proud of me.”
It would be hard for anyone, even his most dogged detractors, to have been anything but proud of the way Manning said goodbye to the family business of being an NFL quarterback.
Even the one critical question of him from USA Today reporter Lindsay Jones was answered with a fair amount of diplomacy.
When Jones asked if Manning had anything to say about the 20-year-old sexual assault charges from his time at Tennessee, charges that were twice settled out of court, the future Hall of Famer replied: “I did not do what has been alleged. Like Forrest Gump said, ‘That’s all I have to say about that.'”
Tweeted Jones as she was being attacked on social media: “Manning deserved a chance to respond to what everyone has been saying about him for the last month. I had to ask.”
And she surely did. It’s what good journalists, however unpopular their diligence, do. And because of that it was surprising bordering on amazing that no one asked about the December charges by Al Jazeera that Manning once used HGH to help recover from neck surgery.
Yet that shouldn’t take away from Monday.
You want touching? Manning always referred to his mother Olivia’s father as “PawPaw.” During his rookie season, PawPaw would call wondering when his favorite announcing team of John Madden and Pat Summerall would be doing a Colts game. Peyton said he had to explain to his grandfather that Madden and Summerall didn’t do the games of teams headed to a 3-13 record.
But by the next year the Colts were good enough for the dynamic announcing duo to work an Indy game against Dallas.
“I called PawPaw: ‘Guess what? Madden and Summerall are broadcasting the game,'” he recalled, his voice cracking with emotion. “He said, ‘I can’t believe it.’ He was elated and he was very proud, and we beat the Cowboys that week and we let the world know that the Colts had arrived.”
Seven straight 12-win seasons and a Super Bowl crown later, the Colts were NFL royalty for the first time since Unitas threw the game’s prettiest passes. Then the neck injuries came and it was time to start over in Denver.
Four years later, it’s over for good, the culmination of those 18 professional seasons, numerous records and two Super Bowl trophies won with two different teams – the only starting quarterback to accomplish such a feat – certain to make him a first-ballot Hall of Famer five years from now.
Said Manning with words all but irrefutable: “There were other players who were more talented, but there was no one who could out-prepare me.”
Not that Peyton focused on those wins or records as what he would miss most. He singled out the steaks he ate at St. Elmo’s Steak House in Indy after wins. He spoke of shaking New England quarterback Tom Brady’s hand. Of perfecting a fake handoff to former Colts running back Edgerrin James, which might say as much for Manning’s preparation as anything ever has.
He even said of the Patriots’ fans he expects to miss: “And they should miss me because they sure did get a lot of wins off of me.”
Like most bright adults fortunate enough to have been born to well-educated, financially secure, appropriately strict parents, he said all of this without a hint of arrogance, smugness or defiance. He exits a happy warrior, grateful for both the family he was born into and the family he now comes home to each night: wife Ashley and twins Mosley and Marshall.
Or as Peyton noted: “There is no way to measure or properly express what a family like mine can mean.”
But there was a way to perfectly frame his love for his 22 years of college and pro football.
“When someone thoroughly exhausts an experience, they can’t help but revere it,” Manning said. “I revere football. I love the game. So you don’t have to wonder if I’ll miss it. Absolutely, absolutely I will.”
But probably no more than the rest of us will miss watching him play it.
Contact Mark Wiedmer at mwiedmer@timesfreepress.com.