NFL

Seahawks stayed strong after losing Manning sweepstakes

The NFL changed on March 19, 2012.

That was the day Peyton Manning chose the Broncos after a 10-day whirlwind recruiting tour that included stops in Arizona, North Carolina, Colorado and even Indiana.

The ramifications of that day will be felt Sunday at MetLife Stadium, where Manning leads the Broncos into Super Bowl XLVIII against the Seahawks. But they also have been felt across front offices and coaching offices among those teams that came up short in the Manning chase.

There are eight teams besides the Broncos known to have at least made a call to Manning’s agent after the Colts released him on March 6, 2012. Of those eight, six have since replaced their general manager or head coach.

Two replaced both.

Manning’s finalists were the Broncos, Cardinals and Titans. The Cardinals went 5-11 in 2012 after their failed pursuit of Manning, and both general manager Rod Graves and coach Ken Whisenhunt were fired. The Titans went 13-19 over the last two seasons, and coach Mike Munchak was fired last month.

The other teams that expresses varying levels of interest and have seen change are: the Dolphins (GM Jeff Ireland was fired last month), the Redskins (coach Mike Shanahan fired after last season), the Jets (GM Mike Tannenbaum fired after 2012) and the Chiefs (coach Romeo Crennel and GM Scott Pioli fired after 2012).

Yet one of the teams that swung and miss and did not fall apart is Manning’s opponent Sunday.

Seahawks coach Pete Carroll and general manager John Schneider flew to Colorado in hopes of meeting with Manning. The trip was a surprise, and Manning declined to talk to the men.

“As we have ventured into every opportunity, John and I have looked at what is available and what could we possibly get out of the players that are out there,” Carroll recounted this week. “In this free agency opportunity, here’s Peyton Manning. So we started the process, to make an effort, to see if there would be some kind of connection here for us.

“We tried to get involved with that to see if there was a next stage of the process, and there wasn’t. It was very brief. It was fun for a while, with the magnitude of the player and the background and all of that. We were excited about it, to see what would happen, [but] we hadn’t set our sights on this [being something that was] going to change the program at that point. We were just going to follow through on it. We did that and it was over.”

The Seahawks survived because they drafted Russell Wilson a month later, and he has helped them get to the big game in his second season. The other team that survived getting rebuffed by Manning is the 49ers, who discovered Colin Kaepernick could be a star in the 2012 season. Other teams were not as lucky.

Louis Riddick was the Eagles’ director of pro personnel when Manning became a free agent. Now an ESPN analyst, Riddick said the Eagles had brief conversations about pursuing Manning but then opted not to.

Riddick suspects nearly every team in the NFL talked about whether they should pursue Manning. Unless you’re the Patriots, Packers or Saints, why wouldn’t you?

“You’d be foolish if you didn’t think about it, if you didn’t kick it around,” Riddick said. “This isn’t just your typical waiver-wire transaction. You have to talk about it. Whether that discussion lasts five seconds or five hours is a different story, but you have to talk about it.”

Franchise quarterbacks are the rarest commodity in the NFL. If you look at the top quarterbacks in the league, only Manning, Drew Brees and Tony Romo were not drafted by the teams they are playing for.

“You sit up and take notice when a guy like that is available,” Riddick said. “You start to run through scenarios and contemplate whether or not you should throw your hat into the ring. He’s a once-in-a-generation, possibly once-in-a-lifetime type of player.”

Tannenbaum, the former Jets GM, made a call to Tom Condon, Manning’s agent, when he became available. The Jets had Mark Sanchez but wanted to gauge Manning’s interest in becoming a Jet.

“It’s unusual for someone of Peyton Manning’s stature to become available on the free agent market,” Tannenbaum said this week. “Denver, obviously, was able to be able to greatly benefit from it. Certainly I’m sure it was something that was talked about in most NFL front offices.”

The Jets quickly realized Manning was not interested. They signed Sanchez to a contract extension soon thereafter, but the Manning signing had an even greater effect on the organization. A day after the Broncos signed Manning, they traded their incumbent starter, Tim Tebow … to the Jets.

Those transactions — the Sanchez extension and the Tebow trade — were two of the things that got Tannenbaum fired after the 2012 season. Neither may have happened if Manning never became a free agent.