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Peyton Manning picked carpool duty over making an NFL comeback
By Will Ogburn
Published:
Peyton Manning, one of the premier competitors in sports, may have chosen carpool duty over an NFL comeback with the Miami Dolphins last season, according to his father Archie.
Archie, a famous Manning in his own right, talked to the New Orleans Times-Picayune on Friday, and he revealed an interesting nugget about his son.
When Dolphins’ QB Ryan Tannehill went down with an injury, a text was sent to Peyton by their head coach, Adam Gase. Gase was Manning’s offensive coordinator in Denver for two seasons, and he tried out a hypothetical on his former QB.
“It started with Gase,” Archie said while at the annual Manning Passing Academy. “He said, ‘Hey 18, Tannehill went down.’ He said, ‘I think he’s going to miss some time. The first question I’m going to get at the press conference in the morning is if I’m going to try to bring you to Miami. What do you want me to tell them?”
A fair question – but for Peyton, who has been enjoying the perks of retirement lately, the answer was simple; he had more important things to do.
“The text message came back from Peyton, ‘You tell them I could probably come play, but there’s no way I can miss carpool the next two weeks.’ So, he was done.”
Feel old yet? It seems like just yesterday that Manning was tearing it up with the Indianapolis Colts and Denver Broncos, extending his prime well into his late 30’s. Now, the middle Manning brother is living the civilian life and he says there’s no itch to return.
“I did not miss it like a lot of people told me that I would,” Peyton said. “People would say, ‘Don’t go to games. You’re going to feel miserable. It’s not what you want to do.’ And that just wasn’t true. I enjoyed being at games; I enjoyed being a fan.
“I heard Derek Jeter say, they asked him if he missed it. And he said, look, if you could parachute in just for the World Series, yeah, he’d love to do that. But, as far as everything that goes into getting ready for that, I did it for a long time, and I got to kind of end on my terms and was very much at peace with it all year.”
A former resident of both Baton Rouge and the heart of Crimson Tide country, Will Ogburn handles multimedia content and news coverage for Saturday Down South.