The Mann of the hour beat Tom Brady Wednesday. Peyton Manning practiced with his team, and Brady was too ill to practice with his team. Now all Manning has to do is beat him Sunday, and he’s back in the Super Bowl.
Except all this Manning-Brady Legacy Game talk overlooks the one man who has stood in Manning’s way from the moment he entered the league 15 years ago, the one man Brady never had plotting against him.
The one man who has made Manning more sick than anyone who stood between him and the Lombardi Trophy.
A man who, if Brady is at anything less than 100 percent on Sunday, will have his back with a defense prepared to confuse and fluster Manning more than any other. A defense that will believe it can do the job against Peyton Manning.
And such is Manning’s respect for this man that if you listened to him Wednesday, you would have thought Manning and the Broncos were trying to claim the Bill Belichick Trophy, not the Lombardi Trophy.
“Coach Belichick is the best coach that I’ve ever competed against,” Manning said, “and I think it’s safe to say he’ll go down as the greatest NFL coach of all time.
“And so, the teams that he has coached, that I’ve competed against, have always been well-coached, always been prepared, have always played hard for 60 minutes.
“If I had to think of a couple of things that stood out about the teams that he’s coached — I played against him when he was a defensive coordinator with the Jets, and then when he was the head coach in New England — those things jump out every single week, and to me, that speaks to his coaching.”
In 1998, when Belichick was Bill Parcells’ defensive coordinator with the Jets, Manning threw two interceptions in a 44-6 blowout loss in the third game of his rookie season.
Two years later, in Belichick’s first year with the Patriots, Manning threw three interceptions in a 24-16 loss.
In 2001, three more interceptions in a 44-13 rout.
Manning really didn’t break through against Belichick until the 2006 AFC Championship victory. In the playoffs, Manning is 1-2 against Belichick, with two touchdowns and six interceptions.
For Manning, this would be the sweetest of Peybacks for the torment of his youth — and beyond. Manning was asked if he relished these matchups with Belichick. The Brain vs. The Genius.
“It’s a great challenge when you’ve played against teams coached by Bill Belichick,” Manning said. “Like I said, always well-coached, always well-disciplined, and you know it’s going to be a 60-minute fight.”
Eli Manning ruined Super Bowls XLII and XLVI for Belichick. Peyback for him in a sense as well.
“He’s as good as we’re going to face, as good as we have faced,” Belichick said. “It’ll be a big challenge for us, I think our defensive football team realizes that, and we’ll be out there Sunday to do our very best at defending not only him but the other 10 guys that are out there with him, and they’re all pretty good, too.”
There is no doubt in my mind Manning would have more than one Super Bowl ring had he been paired with Belichick. Broncos defensive coordinator Jack Del Rio is respected, but how often do you suspect Brady will be asked about him?
“Certainly preparation is important in games like this, and you want to have kind of laser focus,” Manning said. “But I guess what I would say, if you have to prepare harder for this game, that means you probably haven’t been preparing hard enough all season long. And so, I really feel you have to treat every game, regular-season game, as if it’s the most important game. I mean, cover yourself from a preparation standpoint, spend the time talking to your teammates about this adjustment or this audible, that’s how you’re supposed to play the game I think and prepare. But when you do that all season long, when you get to games like this, it should flow right along. … Our preparation had been good all season, and it’ll be important that it’s solid again this week.”
Brady, Manning knows, will prepare for Del Rio as if he were Belichick.
“I feel like he’s been a better player each year than he was the year before,” Manning said, “and that to me speaks to his work ethic in the offseason, his refusal to be complacent or satisfied. He always feels like he can step his game up one level higher, which some of the seasons he’s had, you kind of say, ‘How can he can get better than that?’ but I think he has done that.”
Manning was asked how big a deal Brady’s absence from practice Wednesday was.
“I really don’t know the answer to that,” he said. “I would say probably not that big of a one.”
Belichick showing up sick Sunday, now that might get Peyton Manning Super healthy.