Manning Is Colts' Saving Grace

INDIANAPOLIS - The first day of the resurrection did not go as The Savior had hoped.

Peyton Manning had lifted up no one but himself last Sunday, dragging his body up from four sacks and countless hits that followed many of his 37 pass attempts. In the Colts' 24-15 loss to the Miami Dolphins, he had passed for 302 yards and a touchdown but also had thrown three interceptions. The last was a most unwise one that was returned for a touchdown, ending his team's hopes and nearly bringing tears to the eyes of his father as he sat in the stands at the RCA Dome watching the future and remembering the past.

Barely 27 years ago, Archie Manning had been The Savior of a different team. He was in New Orleans, not Indianapolis, trying to save the Saints, not the Colts, but other than geography the job was the same - difficult.

Saving a franchise from itself turned out to be the only thing Archie Manning couldn't do with a football. He couldn't save the Saints from bad coaching and worse management, and so when it was over he had to be content in the knowledge that he was the greatest quarterback in NFL history to never reach the playoffs.

The elder Manning's teams in New Orleans and Minnesota went 56-130-3 in his 14 years in pro football's purgatory, a record that lies about just how skilled a quarterback he truly was. But the numbers are in the record book, and nothing can erase them. That is how it is in sports. There are no second acts once the curtain comes down, although Archie Manning will come as close as one can to getting one now that his blood is back in the NFL.

It is Peyton's Time now, not Archie's. It is the beginning of his attempt to do in Indianapolis what his father could not in New Orleans. So on this first Sunday of The Second Coming of Manning, the father of The Savior sat watching in the stands, knowing what the son could not.

''It's hard,'' Manning said after his boy's first professional football game. ''[Colts'] Coach [Jim] Mora told me they didn't curtail their game plan for him and that made me real proud, but he had the interceptions so people will look and say `Rookie day.' So it was.

''But [Dolphins head coach] Jimmy Johnson told me Peyton carried himself like a veteran most of the time. He's beyond his years in a lot of ways, but this is a very hard game for the quarterback. But don't you worry about Peyton. He'll be just fine.''

A winning attitude

The belief that Peyton Manning will be just fine is why he was the first player taken in April's draft, picked ahead of the raw-boned giant from the West, Ryan Leaf.

It is why the Colts chose him to resurrect a team that has had 23 quarterbacks throw a pass since it moved to the Midwest from Baltimore 15 years ago.

It is why he became the starter the day he was drafted, the 17th in a line of quarterbacks who have started at least one game for the Colts in the past 14 years, years in which the team lost 11 or more games nearly half the seasons.

Such frustrating numbers may have come as a shock to Manning, whose teams had lost 11 games total in his eight years of quarterbacking: He was a combined 73-11 at Isidore Newman High School in New Orleans and the University of Tennessee. Yet, as unfamiliar as he was to defeat, Manning was unbowed by the first defeat of his professional career last weekend, walking into a jammed interview room less than 15 minutes after throwing that final, fatal interception and calmly answering every question thrown at him, including one about whether he knew that Leaf's San Diego Chargers had won earlier that day.

There was no hiding in the trainer's room. No surly refusals to answer men who knew less about what he had just done than he did. No making excuses for his mistakes, no pointing out that others had made mistakes, too. There was only Peyton Manning doing what he seems to have always done best - standing tall in the pocket and firing back.

''Yeah, we just missed hitting the home run,'' Manning said, referring to the play before the final interception, on which receiver Torrence Small dropped a ball in tight coverage. ''If I got the ball a little higher ... But you can `what if' all you want.''

As Manning answered the questions, it became clear he was not a ''what if'' kind of quarterback. He had made that fact clear months ago, in fact, on the day he probably became the Colts' Savior in Waiting.

Manning had been flown to Miami on Jimmy Irsay's private plane to have lunch with the Colts owner at the Surf Club because Irsay wanted to look into the eyes of the two top-rated quarterbacks in the upcoming draft before he committed millions of his family's dollars to one of them.

Considering all the Irsays have been through with quarterbacks over the years, it was a reasonable enough request. And when Irsay took that look, Manning looked back and said flatly, ''I will win for you.''

''That sent a shiver down my spine,'' Irsay said later.

It also sent him to the podium minutes into the draft to bet his team's future on Peyton Manning. It is a $48 million bet that included a record $11.6 million signing bonus and contract incentives in which Manning bet on himself as well by tying some of his money to playoff, AFC Championship, and Super Bowl victories.

Prepared from the start

It is no surprise that Manning impressed his new boss with his earnestness because he has been that way since he was 9 and first began hanging around the Saints' training camp with his dad. He has been betting on himself since the first time he tried football in the seventh grade and he has collected most of the time, making clear along the way that he would always be ready to win when the time came.

''I've tried to do everything possible to be prepared,'' Manning said. ''I've been told I'll struggle my rookie year, and I think that statement has some merit. But I hope I'll struggle less because I returned for my senior year.'' Manning remained at Tennessee to play last season despite having graduated with a 3.6 grade-point average in communications in three years.

''I think experience is the best teacher,'' he added. ''I got a lot of it in college, but this is a different game. I have a lot to learn, so the sooner I take the bumps and bruises, the better off I'll be in the long run.

''I'll have to learn on the job. I'll make some mistakes, no question. But hopefully I won't make a bunch of 'em. The best way to learn is to mess it up one time. You can be good on paper, on the chalkboard, in the film room, but it's not the same as being out there. The games are where you really learn.

''For some people, it might be nice to sit behind a [John] Elway or a [Dan] Marino for a year, but I wonder how much you really can learn on the sidelines. I'll get better from playing each week and hope I don't slow the team down.''

Considering that Manning is coming to a team that lost 13 games last season, he'd need to have his right arm amputated to slow down the Colts. Yet he knows much is expected of him at a time when patience is a virtue not often exhibited in sports. Manning has been paid those many millions of dollars not simply to play quarterback better than the previous 23 guys in Indianapolis. He's been paid to win and to win soon despite the circumstances that mitigate against that.

Quarterback is arguably the hardest position to play in sports. It is like playing point guard on the Mass. Turnpike. It is like trying to make a putt for $5,000 with Mike Tyson in your foursome. It is not only difficult and complicated work, it is also dangerous because your mind must work like a computer while someone keeps trying to pull the plug by hitting you in the back of the head with a 2-by-4.

It is a hard job, but Manning has always done what he could to make it easier. That is how he has gotten this far, and it's how he got the nickname ''Caveman.''

It came not from possessing a Schwarzeneggerlike physique but rather from the many hours he would spend locked in the film room at Tennessee, studying his opponents, studying his own mechanics, studying anything he could to make himself better. He was studying when his many teammates, and opponents, were not.

It is the same approach he has brought to Indianapolis, where teammates say he is often seen still looking at film at 7 p.m. at the training complex.

When Manning learned he could not begin practicing right after the draft because of some byzantine NCAA regulation, for example, he came to Indianapolis and left with hours of videotape. He took the tapes home to Knoxville and studied them as well as the Colts playbook. By the time training camp opened in July, he knew his job and everyone else's.

Most important, he knew enough to relieve any anxiety his more experienced teammates might have had about turning their football futures over to someone for whom shaving would be a new experience.

''Never have I felt like the coaches or players have had to slow up to let him catch up, and that has been a great surprise,'' center Jay Leeuwenburg said. ''He's always, `Let's keep moving forward.' You'd think you'd kind of have to hold his hand, but we've never had to do that.''

Demeanor of a pro

Manning's preparedness was obvious last Sunday, in his first exposure to a real NFL defense. The game was faster than anything he had seen before, and the defenses far more complicated. Bodies attacked him from odd places; defenders popped up in strange spots. Yet only once did he seem rattled to the point of distraction.

It was before the play that turned into the first of his interceptions. One leg bounced up and down and his head swiveled back and forth, back and forth, back and forth as he barked signals at the line of scrimmage before finally taking the snap and throwing the interception. You could see it coming. Certainly Terrell Buckley saw it.

Other times he may have misjudged situations or an opponent's ability to recover quickly, but seldom did he seem baffled. Dan Fouts, the great San Diego quarterback, once described his first game in the NFL as analagous to putting your head inside a popcorn maker. Things unseen keep going off in your face.

Perhaps Manning felt the same way, but you would not have guessed it from his demeanor or his play or his reaction to it all. Once the game was over, his reaction might be best described as no reaction at all, beyond the expected one of disappointment in the face of defeat.

Such preparedness and calm were what he had always shown at Tennessee, where he went 39-6 as a four-year starter and set 33 school passing records. It was what Mora expected of him from the first day the Colts drafted him, and it is what Manning has shown the coach over and over in these first few months as The Savior.

''There have been some peaks and valleys and Peyton's going to have those, like all rookie quarterbacks, but he always rebounds with a good showing,'' Mora said. ''One reason why is he works hard. He prepares. He lives in the film room. Football is important to Peyton. Success is important to Peyton.

''He doesn't look for excuses for why something didn't work. He looks for reasons. He knows what everybody is supposed to do and where everybody is supposed to be. He truly understands what we're trying to do.''

Manning understands what the Colts are trying to do with the offense Tom Moore has installed and he understands what Irsay was trying to do when he installed him as the team's quarterback/Savior.

He understands the NFL is not Isidore Newman or Tennessee. It is a league in which the game is about only one thing. It is not about money, although a lot of the time it seems that way. It is not about building character in young men or a sense of family in old ones. It is not even about the linkage between himself and Leaf, a joining neither had control over or can change.

No, the NFL is about only one thing. It is about victory.

Fortunately for the Indianapolis Colts, that's what Peyton Manning has always been about, too.

''Ryan and I are not competing against one another,'' Manning said when asked about Leaf. ''People will make comparisons. You can't pretend it's not there. But we're not trying to out-do each other. We're trying to help our teams get back on the winning track.

''There's pressure in this situation, but I'm used to pressure. In high school, it was being a former quarterback's son. In college, it was being a candidate for the Heisman. It changes now, because you're being paid very generously to do a job, but it's the same kind of pressure. Outside pressure.

''I know it doesn't matter what I think about things. Everyone else will voice their opinion, so the best thing to do is just win. I'm not being paid to set records or throw for touchdowns, although I hope those things will come. I came to the Colts to win games. I'm being paid to win games. The best way to earn my money is win games.''

The Savior hasn't won his first game yet, but everyone knows it's coming. He knows and Archie knows and all those fans with No. 18 on the front and back of their new replica Colts jerseys know.