Well-Bred Colt

He is Archie Manning’s son. And for a long time, that was more than enough.

Somewhere in the Manning home, there is still a videotape of 3-year-old Peyton.

A reporter asks the young son of the New Orleans Saint quarterback what he wants to be when he grows up.

“A quata-back,” says young Peyton.

His favorite quarterback?

“My dad,” he says.

Those were carefree times. Archie would bring Peyton and his older brother by two years, Cooper, to Saturday practices, a time when the game plan was already in place and the schedule called only for a walk-through and maybe some stretching. Peyton and Cooper would crush wads of leftover tape from around the locker room into a ball and go out and play.

“One-on-one football over a hundred-yard field,” Peyton said.

Why would he ever want to do anything else?

Archie is Peyton Manning’s father. And now, that is more than enough.

Archie was a football hero in the South for almost two decades. A two-time All-American at Mississippi, he went on to play 14 years in the NFL, 11 1/2 of those with the Saints before he finished up with the Houston Oilers and Minnesota Vikings. As good as he was, Archie never had enough help to elevate the team to his level, the way Peyton has this season with the Indianapolis Colts.

Still, it was a good life and he wasn’t going to discourage his three sons from following him. But he wasn’t going to coax them into it, either.

“I was reluctant to do that,” Archie said. “I know there are a lot of fathers out there who coach their sons and want them to be in athletics. I kind of went the other way. I never coached my sons. I never pushed. Sometimes, I think if you do that, you just screw them up. But I was always there if they wanted to ask me anything.”

Sometimes, though, Archie just had to get involved.

*

Archie saw Peyton’s passion when his son was 11.

At that age, he was part of a basketball team that had just lost for the first time.

After the game, the volunteer coach, George Fowler, told his young players, “The reason you lost was that you didn’t have your minds ready to play.”

Peyton, seething in defeat, couldn’t hold his tongue.

“The reason we lost,” the 11-year-old told his coach, “is that you don’t know what you are doing.”

Archie, who had been standing off to the side while Fowler spoke but close enough to see his son’s lips moving, asked Peyton exactly what he had said as the two drove home.

Peyton told him.

A quick U-turn and they were on their way to the coach’s house for a quick apology.

*

Archie saw Peyton’s commitment when his son was in Little League.

“He was so serious about winning that sometimes he got a little too bossy with the other kids,” Archie said. “His mother [Olivia] and I wanted him to have friends. So we had to have a talk with him and tell him, ‘Hey, everybody is not like you. Everybody does not like baseball as much as you do. Some kids just show up. They are not going to take extra batting practice. They are not going to work on the double play.’ ”

Peyton’s determination to succeed was not limited to the athletic field. In a school play, he was required to dance the tango.

While some of his friends saw the assignment as mere fun, Peyton saw it as an activity to be perfected.

“He was dead serious about it,” Archie said.

By the time he was done, Peyton danced a mean tango.

*

Archie saw Peyton’s determination when Peyton was a teenager.

Peyton was a good pitcher as well as a talented quarterback. But when he felt he was ultimately going to wind up in football, he decided that, to save and protect his arm, he would no longer pitch.

The manager of his summer-league team, Billy Fitzgerald, ran short of pitchers one day. He knew about Peyton’s resolve to stay off the mound, but he figured the kid could make a one-time exception.

Peyton resisted, but Fitzgerald insisted.

So Peyton took the mound and threw his first pitch well over the batter’s head. The second pitch drilled the batter in the back.

Out marched Fitzgerald to grab the ball and tell Peyton, “That is the most . . . thing I have ever seen in my life.”

*

Archie saw Peyton’s resolve when it was time for his son to go to college.

The assumption was Peyton would go to Mississippi. Where else would a son of Archie Manning go?

But Peyton didn’t see it that way.

“For a long time, I thought I’d go to Ole Miss,” Peyton said. “For a long time, I thought it was the only school that existed.”

As a kid, Peyton had been so obsessed with his father’s collegiate career that, failing to find enough videotapes of Archie’s games, he latched onto some audio tapes and played them over and over to get a feel for what his father had gone through.

So how could Peyton not go to Mississippi?

“They were about to go on probation,” Peyton said. “I wanted to go to a school I felt could be more competitive.”

So he did some research and made some recruiting trips. When Peyton visited Notre Dame, he quizzed then-coach Lou Holtz so much about his program that Holtz later said he had never been asked as many questions by a recruit in 35 years of coaching.

Finally, Peyton settled on Tennessee. But it was hard for him to veer from his father’s path.

“I wanted to follow my heart,” Peyton said. “But instead, I followed my mind.”

*

Peyton is no longer Archie’s little secret.

Cooper’s football career ended when he was injured in his freshman year at Mississippi. Eli, the youngest brother, is a freshman quarterback at Ole Miss.

Peyton? After a collegiate career at Tennessee in which he set two NCAA, eight Southeastern Conference and 33 school records, and finished second in the Heisman Trophy balloting in his senior year, he became the No. 1 pick in the NFL draft.

And in his second NFL season, playing a position that usually takes five or six years to master, Peyton is already in the national spotlight, labeled as the NFL’s next great quarterback with Joe Montana and John Elway in retirement, Steve Young soon to follow and Dan Marino pushing 40.

You want numbers to back that up? Manning struggled in his first season, Indianapolis going 3-13, but he has the AFC East-leading Colts on a pace to reverse those numbers this season. Indianapolis is 10-2 heading into today’s game against the New England Patriots. Manning is the top-ranked passer in the AFC with a 91.6 rating and has a 62.5% completion rate. He has thrown 22 touchdown passes and 14 interceptions. He has thrown a touchdown pass in 25 consecutive games, mounting a challenge to the record of 47, held by another thoroughbred Colt--Johnny Unitas.

You want intangibles? Last Sunday, in Manning’s biggest pro game, a battle for first place in the AFC East against the Dolphins in Miami, Manning had the ball in a tie game in the closing seconds. Given the chance to go for the win in regulation by Coach Jim Mora rather than playing it safe, Manning calmly completed two passes to get his team within range for what turned out to be the game-winning field goal.

You want a second opinion?

“People who say it takes five or six years for a quarterback to develop think Peyton is a big surprise,” Mora said. “But the more you are around him, the less of a surprise he is.”

You want a third opinion?

After viewing Manning in the huddle in clutch situations, offensive tackle Adam Meadows calls him, “Vanilla cool.”

Archie and Olivia watched on a restaurant television in New York last week as Manning engineered that victory over the Dolphins.

And when it was over, Archie looked at the mother of football’s hottest quarterback and said, “Can you believe this?”

No matter what the rest of the world believes about him, Peyton is most concerned with his father’s opinion. On the road, he’ll hop on the bus after a game, away from the crowds, pull out his cell phone and call Archie to talk about the game.

They don’t talk about strategy. Archie doesn’t feel he’s there to pick his son’s game apart.

“I don’t know about the Xs and O’s on his team,” Archie said. “I don’t even know the names of his plays. I don’t want to know. That’s what he has coaches for.

“As for mistakes, he doesn’t make many mistakes. And if he does, he knows what he did wrong. He knows more about the game than I do right now.”

Is he going to be a better quarterback than Archie?

“He’s already a better quarterback than I was,” Archie said. “He just is.”

Peyton loves knowing his father is never more than a phone call away. “It helps to have a sounding board,” Peyton said. “He knows how this thing works. It’s lucky to have him on your side.”

Especially in the rough times. After losing only 11 games in high school and college, Manning, immediately thrust into the role of starting quarterback with the Colts, lost those 13 last season.

“My dad warned me,” Peyton said. “He told me before the draft, ‘This is going to be tough. You are going to be the No. 1 pick and you are going to a bad team. That’s the way it works.’ ”

And when, as predicted, it didn’t work well in Peyton’s rookie season, Archie was there.

“I feel for you,” he told his son. “I’ve been there. But you’ve got to get up and go on to the next game.”

It still means a lot to Peyton to be Archie Manning’s son. “He played on bad teams with bad defenses and he got beat up,” Peyton said. “But he played for 14 years and he came to work every Monday.”

And Archie is no longer hesitant to boast about being Peyton Manning’s father.

“I’m ready to just go out and brag,” Archie said. “I’m so proud, I feel like just grabbing someone off the street and saying, ‘Let me tell you a few things about my son.’ ”

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Peyton’s Places

Where Peyton Manning ranks in passing categories this season:

Rating: 91.6 (4th)

Attempts: 397 (6th)

Completions: 248 (T2nd)

Completion pct.: 62.5 (3rd)

Yards: 3,212 (2nd)

Touchdowns: 22 (T2nd)

Interceptions: 14 (T4th most)