The Mannings by Lars Anderson

Author:Lars Anderson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2016-08-22T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 17

Teaching Life—and Football—Lessons

New Orleans. Autumn 1987.

From the time they started playing catch in their front yard, they were naturals.

Cooper enjoyed showing off little brother Peyton’s football skills. When Peyton was three, he could take snaps from center and perform five-step drops, which he proudly demonstrated to Cooper’s friends. Peyton also could execute seven-step drops. Mimicking his dad, he’d hold a Nerf football up close to his ear, run seven steps back, then throw the Nerf across the living room.

As he grew older, little Peyton would climb onto his dad’s lap when Archie was studying game film. Peyton’s eyes would grow as wide as twin moons as he watched the action, mesmerized by the violent ballet that danced on the screen. Peyton soon began asking questions about the game, about what his dad was looking at, why different players lined up in different spots on the field, who told them what to do and where to run. It wasn’t long before Peyton was constantly firing the same query at Archie, no matter what his father was doing: Daddy, Daddy, can we watch film?

By the time Peyton was in second grade he could throw a tight spiral. One afternoon Archie went to a school event in Peyton’s grade school cafeteria; Peyton went outside with his buddies to play. Out of the corner of his eye through a window, Archie saw a football travel the arc of a rainbow. He looked closer; surely an adult had thrown the pass. But no. He saw another spiraling ball soar through a bluebird Southern sky and Peyton’s arm drop as the ball spun through the sunshine. “Did you see that?” another dad asked Archie.

Peyton was an intense boy, his internal furnace firing at full blast most hours of the day. One evening Archie invited Saints linebacker Rickey Jackson to come over for dinner. An All-Pro with a mean streak—he didn’t even use knee pads or thigh pads and played most of the 1989 season with his jaw wired shut—Jackson was one of the NFL’s most physical players. After dinner, Peyton asked Rickey to come upstairs to see his mini–basketball hoop that he and Cooper shot at every night. Minutes later Archie, in the living room, heard shouts and clanks and stomps and yells coming from Peyton’s room. Rickey eventually walked downstairs, sweat pouring off him as if he’d just played five-on-five with a group of adults. Shaking his head, Rickey admitted to Archie that his boy had just trounced him.

When Peyton was in third grade, Archie saw more hints that his middle son was deeply serious about sports. Late in one of Peyton’s basketball games the coach told Peyton to foul an opposing player to stop the clock. Peyton didn’t just slap the player he was defending on the wrist; he kicked him in the stomach.

Archie had tried to coach Peyton’s youth basketball team one winter, but Archie clashed with his star player. Before the season tipped off, the league coaches viewed all the players at a tryout, then drafted the kids onto their teams.

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