Like It Is

Manning will need every inch of wiliness

Football, it has been said many times, is a game of inches.

Sunday, Denver had the most important inches of the game, the 6 inches between Peyton Manning's ears.

Manning, 39, is past his prime. Throwing deep for a completion is almost a dream. Sort of like him running the ball for plus yards.

Against the favored New England Patriots and their quarterback, Tom Brady, who is considered by many to be the best ever, Manning completed a pedestrian 17 of 32 passes for 176yards.

Usually, those numbers won't win an AFC championship game, especially when you have 99 yards rushing on 30 carries.

Manning, though, managed the game almost seamlessly. His defense did the rest.

He threw touchdown passes in the first and second quarters to 33-year-old tight end Owen Daniels, and that might have caught the Patriots by surprise. Daniels has played his entire career on teams coached by Gary Kubiak, but Daniels came into Sunday with only three touchdown catches on the seasons.

His only catches Sunday were touchdowns.

Some of that credit has to go to the wily veteran Manning.

Now, the Super Bowl has a distinct SEC flavor. Manning played for the Tennessee Volunteers, where he finished second in the Heisman Trophy voting in 1997.

Cam Newton, quarterback of the Carolina Panthers, was 8 years old in 1997, and 13 years later he won the Heisman and led Auburn to the BCS National Championship.

Newton is a freak.

He's big and fast and can beat teams with his arm or his legs.

In Sunday's victory over the Arizona Cardinals, he completed 19 of 28 passes for 335 yards and 2 touchdowns. He rushed for 2 touchdowns, carrying 10 times for 47 yards. That's 3 yards more than the Patriots had against the Broncos.

The Broncos and Panthers each have six starters from the SEC. Denver has two starters from the Big Ten while Carolina has five, four of those from Ohio State.

Just saying, if you are looking for another reason to pull for the Broncos, that might be enough.

Between now and Feb. 7, Super Bowl Sunday, the quarterbacks will be the most written and talked-about players.

The old sheriff vs. the new sheriff who, ironically, plays a lot like Peyton's dad Archie, who was cursed to spend nearly all of his NFL career with the New Orleans Saints at a time when they might have struggled to beat LSU, or even Tulane. Their fans wore paper bags over their heads with the word "Aint's" on them.

Peyton Manning has won the NFL's MVP award a record five times, the last honor coming two seasons ago, but he has proven to everyone with the Indianapolis Colts they gave up on him too soon after he had neck-fusion surgery.

The Colts have gone 41-23 since Manning left before the 2012 season; Manning is 53-12 as a starter for Denver and headed to another Super Bowl.

Newton was the first NFL rookie to pass for 4,000 yards and rush for more than 700. Two times Newton passed for more than 400 yards.

This past season Newton became the first NFL quarterback to pass for 30 touchdowns and run for 10. He's setting some records, Manning owns a bunch of records.

It may be that Newton's immense talent -- so much that it seems like he was kissed by football angels at birth -- can make up for what he lacks in experience on the NFL's biggest stage.

Much is going to be written and said in the upcoming days, especially with Carolina favored, but when they take the field this one could come down to the freak vs. the sneak.

Sports on 01/26/2016

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