Q: Based on your experience and how the defenses are playing against you, do you think the job of quarterback in the NFL is easier or more complicated than when you started playing?
Peyton Manning:Well, on the one hand you find that as you add experience you feel more comfortable and you have more confidence. I was in the same offense for five years, and that is something that not many quarterbacks can say, with different coordinators that were changing around us, although in these five years my coordinator was always the same. I can say this: With what we do on offense and with all the articles that are written about the audibles that we make, the changes of play on the line of scrimmage, I think that the different defenses, when they have to play with us, really prepare to face us and make it difficult for us. stuff. Obviously when you change the plays on the line of scrimmage based on what the defense is doing, they are going to try to disguise what they are doing, not showing us what you plan to do until the last minute, or leading us to believe that they will try to do something that worked for them the week before; but when they play with us they always try to do something totally different. I certainly think that the mental part of the game and the game of cat and mouse that is between you and the defense, your coordinator, central linebacker or free safety are the real challenges each Sunday. And that seems as difficult as ever.
Q: Play the Browns this week. How close is your relationship with Tim Couch?
Peyton Manning: Tim and I are friends. We played against each other in college and we stayed in touch ever since he got to professional football.
Q: How often do you speak?
Peyton Manning: We don’t talk – I don’t know, maybe a couple of times during the season. You’ll probably see him at a couple of events during the break after the season is over. I haven’t talked to him as much this year as I have in the past.
Q: As the season progresses, do things get physically or mentally difficult?
Peyton Manning:I think that depends more on each individual. For newbies, there is talk of reaching the newbie barrier. I think physically the rookies reached that barrier. Being a quarterback has its price, but it depends more on the protection one has. If you get beaten up every Sunday you eventually pay the price. The question for a quarterback is to know if you want to do the exact same thing week after week. When it comes to a great game and you’re coming off a three-game winning streak, obviously you’re going to be studying recordings and doing a lot of extra work. But when you lose that game and you are in a bad mood, are you going to do the same next week? That’s the biggest mental challenge for a quarterback coming to weeks 13, 14, 15,
Q: Couch has been struggling at home lately. Do you have any advice for him?
Peyton Manning:I’m not qualified to give Tim advice. He is a tough quarterback. Play this sport with great intensity and passion. Nobody really knows what it is about unless you play in that position. It is a position that makes you humble. I’m always on the quarterback’s side, I don’t like it when people boo them or take them out of the game for having a bad day with four or five interceptions. Obviously when playing a quarterback I guess that doesn’t matter too much – quarterbacks are like a fraternity so I can tell what it feels like to play. It seems like the quarterback position comes down to something like – you’ve done for me lately. You have to try to play consistently every Sunday. For example, Cleveland Browns fans, they’ve been with their team for a long time. and they hope they win, just like our Colts fans expect us to win. I think generally the fans and the players want the same thing; they want to win. They all want to win.
Q: Passing was a bit affected when it took Pollard to block. Is there a plan that involves passing the ball more?
Peyton Manning:We would certainly like to get Marcus more involved. His role has changed a bit since we became a team with three wide receivers. We lost Ken Dilger in the game against Tampa Bay and that has altered Marcus’s work a bit as well. The things he’s done, he hasn’t had a lot of receptions, but the ones he did were great plays. He has given us two touchdowns in the last two weeks against Houston and against Tennessee, he is a player that when he receives the ball, great things usually happen, I am very aware of that. He has been very unselfish about his role this year; Marvin has been able to make a lot of receptions and is about to break the record for receptions in one season. But Marcus showed no selfishness, he blocked well and was always there when it was needed to receive a pass.
Q: I wanted to ask you about the NFL Fever video game. How extensive was your participation in a project like that?
Peyton Manning:I was the one who introduced the game for the last couple of years. And during the creation of the game, I spent some time on the Microsoft campus talking about it – with the creators, talking about some details of the offensive and defensive plays. Then I spent a whole day in which they captured my movements; I put on a black suit with all those dots and electrical objects attached to the suit and they filmed me doing about 250 movements, from a five step backward movement to the call of a play, an audible sack count to the passing movement or just running I also believe that several of the figures in the game are derived from my movements, although they have been altered so that the quarterbacks look different. It can be said that I was quite involved.
Q: Things, particularly in the AFC, do they look as blurry for the players as it does for the fans and different media?
Peyton Manning: I think so. Coach Dungy points it out every Monday, to show us what’s going on, so everyone knows where we are. These last three games are very important, and this is the most important Sunday of the year, especially in the AFC. All these games are precious, we play against the Cleveland Browns and we are fighting for the same thing as them, to stay in the race to reach the playoffs in our respective divisions, and that is the reason why we will see the teams and players play. with a lot of passion these last three weeks.
Q: Is it easier for teams that did not think they were competitors for the Super Bowl to believe they could make it because of what has happened in the league in recent years?
Peyton Manning: I think so, from the training camps all the teams are saying, “hey, anything can happen, we can beat anyone one of these Sundays.” That gives teams a lot of motivation while they are out of season or in training camps, you don’t have to look at what happened last year, that has already happened; “Hey, let’s go out this year to win. We’re going to make the playoffs and once we’re there, anything can happen.”
Q: How much does not win a playoff game upset you?
Peyton Manning:Well, I’ve been playing in this league for five years. Obviously in my rookie year we weren’t very good. In my second year we had a break and then the Titans beat us in a fairly even game. The following year we missed a field goal in overtime that would have given us victory over the Dolphins. And last year, everyone knows that things didn’t go quite right for us, we made some changes and here we are, with a little bit from each game, I guess if you ask me in my 15th or 16th year, the answer would be different. But here I am, in my fifth year as a professional, and I can tell you that this year we are going to do a lot more than just try to win a playoff game. I don’t think winning a playoff game is going to fix anything, but if you ask most quarterbacks, everyone is going to tell you they want to do more than win a playoff game. They want to keep moving forward and eventually they want to win the championship.
Q: Can you tell us what it feels like to come from a family of football players, did you feel any additional pressure given your father’s long and successful career?
Peyton Manning:Well, I think I’ve been in the limelight for a long time. I think the way my father handled the whole situation has been helpful. He never pressured me or my least brother, Eli, to play quarterbacks. Certainly there are expectations and pressures coming from the outside, but my father gives me the impression that he never expected us – to have one son playing in the NFL and another playing quarterback in college football. He just supported us in whatever we did, him and my mother, and that just made us have fun doing sports. Football has always been fun for me, that’s why I play with such passion, the same way I would if I were playing in the backyard. Certainly when you go to college in Tennessee, And it’s played in the same conference my father played in, they pick you in the first round, just like they did my father. I think there were a lot of expectations from the beginning, but being Archie Manning’s son never put more pressure on me as he always supported me no matter what.
Q: Did she ever call you to give you some parental advice?
Peyton Manning: No. We didn’t talk – in fact, we haven’t talked about it in a long time. He is my father, but he is also one of my best friends, we talk quite often, every day or every other day. It’s nice to have someone who went the same way when it comes to cooperating with the media or thanking the fans or just asking for help in different situations. I feel very lucky to have someone to lean on.
Q: Regarding your knee injury, will it affect you this week, are there chances that you will play injured, could it get worse for the rest of the season?
Peyton Manning:I am always 100% during the week and at the game. It is simply something that he had from before and many players have injuries. It doesn’t affect me in the least in what I do.
Q: Could you tell us a bit about your role in helping your brother and your decision to become a professional player?
Peyton Manning:I’m just going to play a role similar to the one my father played for me. Eli and I have talked a bit about everything and at the moment he is trying to focus on exams and preparing for his championship game, which is what he needs to do. I am basically here to answer your questions. I’m not going to sit down and say “Look, this is what you have to do.” When you ask me something, I will give you the best possible answer. That is the best my father could do when I was trying to make a decision in very similar situations. I was supposed to graduate in May, which is when Eli is going to graduate. He’s a substitute and I wasn’t, but I was going to graduate in three years. I think that makes the decision a bit more difficult, since you are about to receive your degree. My father let me make my own decision. He answered any questions I had and helped me get in touch with people, marshals who had decided to stay or leave college, to seek as much advice as possible. But in the end it had to be my decision and the same goes for Eli. I will support whatever decision he makes, but it is a tough decision to make. It is truly a tough decision and it will not be easy for you to make it.
Q: Does losing two games to Tennessee add pressure to you?
Peyton Manning: Add pressure to what?
Q: To the team, to yourself to win.
Peyton Manning: Every week there is pressure for us to win. Even if we had beaten Tennessee, there would be pressure for us to beat Cleveland. Of course, losing to Tennessee made things a bit tricky. But this game in Cleveland was still going to be a game we had to win. And that’s the way we prepare for this game, the loss to Tennessee was disappointing but it’s over. We are preparing for Cleveland, which is coming off a great victory and is in the same condition as us. There is going to be a great football game on Sunday.
Q: Do you think you push yourself too hard sometimes?
Peyton Manning: Being the quarterback for five years, starting every game, I try to play well every Sunday. I feel like for us to win, I need to do my job well. So when we don’t win, despite what the stats say, I always wish I had done a little more to help my team win. I feel very responsible and guilty, but that does not affect the way I make decisions or play. I go out and play to win, at the same time, I try to make smart decisions and I am aware that my defense is playing well. I let the players around me make the plays for me, giving the ball to Marvin or Pollard. But I’m there to win – and that’s hard work. I am there to win.
Q: How the nature of the season changes to meet so few teams that have given up; that each team seems every week to be playing for something this year despite the lateness of the season?
Peyton Manning:We finished 6-10 last season and everyone said we would get an easier schedule this year. But that is certainly not what happened. All the teams we’ve played with – it seems to me that in college football sometimes that happens too. In college, when the match schedule comes out, you think “We beat these, these too.” We played Houston twice, and they were both pretty even games. You see what they did with Pittsburgh last Sunday, or our game against the Bengals, which was even even though they are not very good at the moment, but in every game you have to show up and play well. In the NFL, I don’t care what brands there are, there are a lot of good players, and when you have good football players, you can beat anyone on any given Sunday.
Q: Do you feel like you need to win, or rather that the Colts must win to make the playoffs?
Peyton Manning: I definitely think that way. I would hate to be in the situation where you are wishing someone else would win or lose. It is something very difficult to bear. Our job is to take care of the Colts and it starts with Cleveland this week, continues with the Giants the next, and then Jacksonville. But right now it’s all about Cleveland. We have to take care of our affairs, and hope that at the end of the season everything works out for you.
Q: In the last five years, do you find that the game has changed in such a way that it is now easier to recover from a difference of ten points than in the past? It gives the impression that it happens more often.
Peyton Manning:We have recovered in several games this season. It seems easy once you’ve done it. When you’re recovering from a ten point or more deficit at any point in the game, it definitely doesn’t look like it. So I get the impression that everyone is more excited in the locker room or on the flight back because you know it – it’s a tough job. But against Denver, we were losing and we were in a 4th and 5, everything was fine, we completed the pass and moved on. We kicked the field goal and then you think, “You know, that was just as difficult as the rest.” It’s 4th and 5th, it’s snowing, they have double marks, good coverage and somehow we managed to make the play, the feeling you feel when you recover is very satisfying. I don’t think it will make it easier.
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