Demand for perfection
In his first 13 seasons in the NFL, Manning never failed to start a game — 208 straight, 227 including the playoffs. Then came the neck surgeries and 2011, which he missed entirely.
Despite nine-game win streak, Peyton Manning says he’s not back yet
The Post Sports Live crew offers bold predictions for the Redskins game at Philadelphia this weekend.
So even as the Colts prepared for life without Manning, he prepared for life without the only NFL team he had ever known. Last December, Cooper Helfet, whose career as a tight end at Duke had just ended, received a call from his head coach. David Cutcliffe was Manning’s offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach at Tennessee back in the late 1990s, and there is no one Manning trusts more with his throwing motion, his mechanics.
Cutcliffe told Helfet that Manning would be working out some at Duke, and he needed receivers. “I was like, ‘Ooooh, man,’ ” Helfet said. “I’d love to. Nothing would be better than that.’”
Beginning with workouts in December, Helfet saw what the Colts already knew and the Broncos would later find out: Manning’s demand for perfection, not only from himself but from those around him. During Manning’s career in Indianapolis, the Colts had a tough time keeping a backup sharp because Manning wanted to take every rep in every situation.
“It was a sight to see for an aspiring athlete,” said Helfet, who spent the preseason with Seattle before he was hurt and released.
Manning clearly had a way to go when he first started his workouts at Duke. Initially, he lobbed balls. He couldn’t throw tight spirals downfield. Cutcliffe talks about rotations per minute on a properly thrown pass, and Manning’s were low.
But he returned after the New Year, and Helfet saw changes. “By the end of February or the middle of March, he was throwing 50-yard balls on the money, and doing drills where Coach Cut would pretend to have a safety, and he’d have to look off his eyes and really kind of gun balls on a line into a small window for receivers,” he said. “He was unbelievably stronger.”
Manning is on pace to throw for 4,590 yards, which would be the second-highest total in his career. With three touchdown passes in the season’s final two games, he would have 34, a total he has surpassed just once.
His quarterback rating of 103.5 would rank as the third-best of his career; he trails only Green Bay’s Aaron Rodgers, Washington’s Robert Griffin III and San Francisco’s Alex Smith by a scant margin; Rodgers’s league-best rating is 104.7.
“Nothing that he’s done this year has surprised me at all,” said veteran wide receiver Brandon Stokley, an Indianapolis teammate of Manning’s for four seasons and a Bronco now.
Stokley knows the foundation for all this: Manning’s unrelenting attention to detail. As offensive coordinator Mike McCoy said earlier in the year, “He challenges everyone in the building every day.” During the workouts at Duke, Manning would tell Helfet what he expected, how to burst out of a route, not to turn his eyes to the quarterback until he had finished his move. Those kinds of conversations have continued with the Broncos and young wide receivers Eric Decker and Demaryius Thomas, Manning’s primary targets.
- Spam
- Obscene
- Duplicate
Loading...
Comments