“I have fought the good fight and I have finished the race. I have kept the faith.”
-2 Timothy 4:7
Citing that Biblical passage, so apropos to the moment at hand, Peyton Manning officially ended his football career Monday afternoon at the Denver Broncos team complex after 18 seasons.
“There is just something about 18 years,” Manning said. “Eighteen is a good number and today I retire from pro football.”
It was an emotional speech from Manning and a powerful one. It’s one you’ll find quoted in plenty of commencement addresses this spring I’m sure, just as Michael Jordan’s was when he was inducted into the NBA Hall of Fame. Manning was an elite player, a Hall of Fame quarterback and this was his moment to show it one last time.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qBCp0kIVsU8
“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.”
Manning retires with pretty much every meaningful quarterback record in hand. Some, like his wins total of 200 counting the playoffs, the most ever, will be eclipsed by Tom Brady if he stays healthy and plays a couple more seasons. Some of his records seem impossible to even get close too like his 93 games with 300-plus yards passing, five games with a perfect 158.3 rating and 25 games with four or more touchdown passes all seem kind of ridiculous. Maybe somebody will get close to his 55 touchdown passes in a single season mark he set in 2013, but no one’s even sniffed at it since.
https://twitter.com/LaceyNycole/status/706954761984016384
Manning’s total touchdown total of 539? Brady will have to throw 111 more TDs just to tie it. So will Drew Brees. The next closest active player behind those guys is Peyton’s own brother Eli with 294. That’s the bar Peyton Manning has set. If you add Ben Roethlisberger’s and Aaron Rodgers’ career touchdown totals together, you’re still 10 touchdowns short of Manning’s record. It might be untouchable.
Manning had been coy in public about his retirement plans all season, even though the writing was on the wall. The networks that carry NFL games made sure to feature the Broncos as often as they could in their national telecasts as the perception was that this was Manning’s “farewell season.”
Even his own small daughter Mosley didn’t know for sure and asked her dad about it before the Super Bowl.
“A week before the Super Bowl our daughter Mosley asked me, ‘Daddy, is this the last game?’
‘Yes, Mosley, it’s the last game of the season.’
‘I sure do want you to win that trophy.’
‘I do too, Mosley. And that’s what we’re trying to do.’
“Then she asked, ‘Daddy is this the last game ever?’ And that’s just when I shook my head in amazement because I was thinking, ‘Mort (Chris Mortensen) and Adam Schefter had gotten to my 5-year-old daughter to cultivate a new source.'”
It was the last game. Something we all really knew at the time, even without all the exhausted and sweaty pronouncements and questions about who Peyton Manning will play for next season? My guess is NBC and if I was that network I’d stick him right in the booth with Al Michaels and Cris Collinsworth. It wouldn’t hurt my feelings to see Rodney Harrison get his pink slip and replaced by Peyton Manning.
The final word from Peyton Manning's retirement press conference?
Of course.
OMAHA! https://t.co/6McvzgHSBl— NFL (@NFL) March 7, 2016
Really, though, Manning in the booth or the studio would be a great loss to the game. Not as a player now as his body has finally betrayed him, but as a coach. Manning’s mind is as sharp as it ever was and the idea of Manning calling offensive plays on the sideline is a thrill any team, and any young quarterback, would want.
GM?
Head coach?
Television?What's next for the newly-retired Peyton Manning? https://t.co/OoOAXc0F5P
— NFL (@NFL) March 7, 2016
“In my opinion, there’s no question he’s the greatest quarterback to ever play the game,” Manning’s college offensive coordinator David Cutcliff, now the head coach at Duke, said Monday. “I just think he’s the most impactful player who’s ever played the game at that position, and maybe period.”
Now imagine how much impact Manning would have as a coach.
So long, Sheriff. It’s been a pleasure.
Peyton Manning simply the best. In my eyes #GOAT #NOLABOY
— Marshall Faulk (@marshallfaulk) March 7, 2016
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