Eli Manning has seen his brother overcome plenty, but nothing quite like this. Watching Peyton throw, fresh off a lost season and neck surgery, Eli was stunned by what he saw: a wobbly, powerless throw that convinced him Peyton’s career was over. What happened in the six months that followed, though, still leaves him in disbelief.
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“He sat out the 2011 season; this is 2012,” Eli Manning recalled. “I remember back in New Orleans it was like Mardi Gras and he’s like, ‘Hey, come out and throw with me. I just want you to see something’. And he was throwing, and I was like, ‘Well, there’s zero chance you can play football. Wow. You can’t throw it. The thing’s coming out soft; it comes out wobbly and high. You can’t rip down on it, and that’s so weird’. And he’s like, ‘I know.’”
During the 2011 season, Peyton Manning was in rough shape. He’d just gone through spinal fusion surgery, his fourth neck procedure, and it forced him to sit out the entire year. The Indianapolis Colts eventually released him in March 2012. When the brothers got together to throw before the 2012 season, Eli noticed something was seriously wrong.
“It just wasn’t the same. It was frustrating and scary for him,” Eli said that time. Peyton couldn’t put any zip on the ball anymore, and he knew it too. “He would look at me and say, ‘What looks wrong? Why is it coming out without any pop?'”
He signed with the Denver Broncos in March 2012, and what followed was nothing short of stunning. In his very first season there, he threw for 4,659 yards and 37 touchdowns, helping Denver finish 13-3.
The Broncos made the playoffs that year and grabbed a first-round bye, though they’d eventually fall 38-35 in double overtime to the Baltimore Ravens in the Divisional Round.
That comeback didn’t go unnoticed either. On February 2, 2013, Peyton walked away with the AP NFL Comeback Player of the Year Award. Looking back on it now, Eli still can’t quite wrap his head around how drastic that turnaround was.
“And I was like, this is scary.” Eli Manning said. “And then for him to, like, grind it out and work and do the treatments and kind of learn how to play this new game where he couldn’t throw it as far, and to go to Denver and then set the NFL record for touchdowns thrown, I was like, ‘That’s the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen’. Like, how things could change so much in that six-month period where he went from ‘there’s zero chance.’”
In his fourth season with Denver, Peyton finally got his second ring when the Broncos beat the Carolina Panthers 24-10 in Super Bowl 50 on February 7, 2016.
No wonder Peyton’s comeback is still talked about. Going from barely being able to feel the ball leaving his hand to an MVP season that rewrote the record books doesn’t happen by accident.