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Another great read on Peyton


BayAreaBronco

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He took a video of the play with his cellphone and sent it off, a digital thank you note — “Hey, I just want to thank you for all your help,” he added — to the doctors in Indianapolis, to the former Colts coach Jim Caldwell and the team’s former general manager Bill Polian and a handful of others.

No Irsay.

“I’m yelling at him, ‘No, you’re not doing it right, this is what a quarterback coach is supposed to do,’ ” Manning said. “He’s like, ‘I’m a physical therapist.’ ”

:lol:

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http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/02/sports/football/for-peyton-manning-one-pass-then-many-steps.html?_r=2&pagewanted=1&hp&pagewanted=all

“I did not want people seeing me,” he said. “It becomes a private, sensitive deal.”

So last summer, before the Colts could finally get a look at him — before even they fully realized his condition — Manning worked in secret with Rockies trainers, in hopes of avoiding the September operation that ultimately cost him the 2011 season. In June, he, a trainer and Helton went to the indoor batting cages at Coors Field. Millions of people have marveled over Manning’s passes. This one to Helton, though, Manning wanted hidden from view.

“It was not good; he actually thought I was joking when I threw it to him,” Manning said. “The ball nose-dived. He was like ‘That’s funny.’ I was like ‘You don’t understand. I’m telling you.’ ”

Manning was leaning against a fence, still wiping away the sweat from his latest practice. He can laugh about that pass to Helton now, just as he did a few months later when, after a throwing session in which he tried to convince the Colts and himself that he was healthy enough to play in the season opener last September, he was told he looked like Chad Pennington, the former Jets and Dolphins quarterback whose lack of arm strength was often dissected.

Maybe so. Manning was watching film one day in Denver, and finally found what he was looking for. It was a long pass, a comebacker from Manning on the right hash mark to Decker on the left side. It was, Manning recalls, “a pretty healthy throw.”

He took a video of the play with his cellphone and sent it off, a digital thank you note — “Hey, I just want to thank you for all your help,” he added — to the doctors in Indianapolis, to the former Colts coach Jim Caldwell and the team’s former general manager Bill Polian and a handful of others.

There were many people who saw Manning at his lowest physical state — he threw with his wife, Ashley, at one point, and with his brother Eli last summer in New Orleans, when Eli could see that Peyton could not complete his throwing motion. The video went to David Cutcliffe, Manning’s coach at Tennessee who now runs the Duke program.

Manning stayed at Cutcliffe’s home, and worked with him at Duke consistently after the spinal fusion surgery. It went to the trainers in Indianapolis, one of whom Manning turned into a makeshift quarterback coach.

That was an awkward time that Manning describes as being in “no man’s world” — with the Colts coaches having to work on their game plans and Manning unable to practice. Manning could not lift weights for months, and most of his rehabilitation took place on the field, not in the training room.

“I’m yelling at him, ‘No, you’re not doing it right, this is what a quarterback coach is supposed to do,’ ” Manning said. “He’s like, ‘I’m a physical therapist.’ ”

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