Peyton Manning is a shadow of his former self.
That will be evident when you watch him quarterback his Denver Broncos on Sunday against the Browns at FirstEnergy Stadium.
The unbeaten Broncos (5-0) will be heavy favorites and probably will win, but don’t expect Manning to be the catalyst for any such victory by throwing for 350 yards and four TDs. Those days are gone.
This likely will be his last game – as a player at least – in Cleveland. That seems fitting since, near the beginning of his career, he played, as a member of the Indianapolis Colts, against the Browns in their 1999 expansion season at what was then known as Cleveland Browns Stadium.
Manning completed 27 of 43 passes for 276 yards and no touchdowns with no interceptions in the Colts’ last-second 29-28 victory. Fourteen of those completions went to wide receiver Marvin Harrison for 138 yards, setting a club record.
The 2-13 Browns, who were playing their season finale, led 28-19 after three quarters and appeared to be on their way to pulling off a huge upset over the 12-2 Colts. Then Manning went to work, driving his team down the field for first a touchdown and then a field goal to pull out the victory, courtesy of Mike Vanderjagt’s chip-shot 21-yarder with four seconds left.
That was a long time ago. Manning was in just his second season then. After throwing for 26 TDs with 28 interceptions as a rookie in 1998, with the Colts finishing a dismal 3-13, he got it together and was en route to passing for 26 scores again, but this time with only 15 picks, as the club flipped its record to 13-3 and went from worst to first in the AFC East.
Manning will retire sometime soon, possibly after this season depending how things go for him and the Broncos. The rumor that simply won’t go away is that this will pave the way for him to come to Cleveland and take over as general manager for his good friend, Browns owner Jimmy Haslam.
A native and current resident of Knoxville, Tenn., where the Pilot Flying J travel center company he owns and operates is based, Haslam and his father, Pilot founder Jim Haslam, are both big boosters at the University of Tennessee, where Manning starred.
So connecting the dots to bring Manning to Cleveland is not hard. What helps that effort is the fact that the Browns’ current GM, Ray Farmer, has done a poor job in his short stint and has just returned from a four-game NFL-imposed suspension for his involvement in Textgate. All that is a bad look for a bottom-line guy like Haslam.
Back in 1999, the Browns had a former NFL star who was in his first year as an NFL GM in Dwight Clark, a friend of Browns President and minority owner Carmen Policy. Clark’s work in the front office did not come close to matching the level of his play on the field. His poor NFL Draft picks and free-agent signings kept those first two Browns teams from having any chance to succeed. To say it was an unmitigated disaster would be putting it mildly.
Would Manning, with a similar background as Clark, do a better job as a GM? Would Haslam be interested in hiring him? Would Manning be interested in joining the Browns?
In short, will Manning ever be the GM in Cleveland?
Of course, no one knows the answers to any of those questions now.
But with the persistent rumors out there – where there’s smoke there’s usually fire – Browns fans, desperate for their team to finally become a winner, will be looking at Manning in an entirely different way on Sunday than they did in his first trip to Cleveland 16 years ago.
