Sports

Comebacks abound and astound in NFL

ADRIAN PETERSON Mending ACL, chasing 2K.

CHUCK PAGANO Never left Colts in spirit.

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DENVER — From Peyton Manning overcoming four neck surgeries to Adrian Peterson’s rebound from a shredded knee to Chuck Pagano’s fight with leukemia, this has been the Year of the Comeback in the NFL.

A season besmirched by tragedies, replacement officials and a bounty scandal also will go down as one in which some of the game’s greats not only regained their old form but somehow surpassed it.

When the season started, who could have expected Manning to recapture his MVP play so quickly with a new team? Or for Peterson to come back less than nine months after shredding his left knee. Or for Jamaal Charles to return better than ever after suffering a similar injury.

Then there’s Pagano beating the biggest opponent of his life.

A year ago, Manning was in the midst of four neck operations to fix a nerve injury that had caused his right arm to atrophy and had sidelined him for an entire season. Soon, he would say a tearful farewell to Indianapolis and hook up with John Elway in Denver.

Peterson’s left knee was still swollen after he’d shredded it on Christmas Eve, an injury similar to the one Charles suffered earlier last season. Yet both would defy medicine and conventional wisdom alike to rebound as better runners than they were before getting hurt.

Pagano’s fight started three months ago when it was disclosed he had cancer, forcing the first-year Colts coach to take time off for chemotherapy treatments. He returned to work this week, taking the reins from assistant Bruce Arians, who guided the team to a surprising playoff berth in his absence.

“When I asked for Bruce to take over, I asked for him to kick some you-know-what and to do great. Damn Bruce, you had to go and win nine games?” Pagano said. “Tough act to follow.”

If all goes well at practice this week, Pagano will be on the sideline for the regular-season finale against Houston.

Despite a new supporting cast and a 36-year-old body he insists continues to confound him, the quintessential quarterback has had one of the best seasons in his storied career. Manning completed 68 percent of his passes for 4,355 yards with 34 TDs and just 11 interceptions.

“A 36-year-old quarterback coming off a year and a-half off, playing on a new team, I’m trying to be as good as I possibly can in this scenario,” Manning said.

Peterson returned to the Vikings lineup less than nine months after reconstructive surgery for torn anterior cruciate and medial collateral ligaments, and with a league-high 1,898 yards, he’s 207 yards shy of Eric Dickerson’s single-season record. He can topple it with another big game Sunday when Minnesota faces Green Bay with a playoff berth on the line for the Vikings.