Just because I call Peyton Manning the GROAT (Greatest Regular Season QB of All-Time), doesn’t mean that I don’t recognize the man is a legend. You have to be a legend to deal with the expectation of Super Bowl or Bust for the majority of your career. Most players if they get to the playoffs is considered a step in the right direction, for a player like Manning that isn’t enough and that is a testament to his greatness.
He had a rough Super Bowl, first play of the game started badly and it went downhill from there.
But, what makes Manning and those like him, so great is that they aren’t going going to run from it. As expected, first day back at Broncos camp Manning sat down and watch the tape from the Super Bowl.
Here is what Peyton had to say after watching the tape per PFT.
“If you ever feel like that’s not important — like, ‘Hey, I don’t need to watch last season; I know what we did; I know what I did wrong’ — no, you don’t know,” Manning said. “You need to watch it. Watch the bad plays. It’s not fun to watch bad plays, to sit there and say, ‘That’s a bad decision’ and ‘That’s a really bad decision’ and ‘Horrible read.’ . . . No matter how old you are, you need to go into that prepared to be constructively criticized and learn how to grow out of the mistakes every year.”
There was a time when I thought the neck injury would sideline Peyton forever or he wouldn’t be the same player, then he went out at shattered a million records. No reason to think he won’t be back in the Super Bowl again, just has to close the deal.