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| No Roman Numerals for the 50th game only. Roman numerals to return next year. |
SUPER BOWL 50 RETROSPECTIVE:
PEYTON'S REVENGE
This story appears in the Feb. 15-22, 2016 issue of Sports Illustrated. Subscribe to the magazine here.
Before the motorized cart that idles outside the Broncos’ locker room can whisk Von Miller away on his victory lap, there remains one important logistical matter to take care of. Which explains why the outside linebacker just stands there, wearing nothing but two towels, and asks no one in particular, “What happened to my pants?”
Behind him, his locker resembles the Panthers’ offense for most of Super Bowl 50: cluttered and disorganized. In both cases the mess is largely of Miller’s making. Beats headphones, three diamond-studded gold chains, a backpack, sparkly sneakers, empty Gatorade bottles and two pairs of grass-stained cleats. A diamond earring worth roughly the cost of a Camry rests on the floor. “I thought that if you win MVP, they pack all that s--- up,” he says, laughing.
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| Date | February 7, 2016 | ||||||||||||||||||
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| Stadium | Levi's Stadium, Santa Clara, California | ||||||||||||||||||
| MVP | Von Miller, linebacker | ||||||||||||||||||
| Favorite | Panthers by 5.5[1] | ||||||||||||||||||
| Referee | Clete Blakeman | ||||||||||||||||||
| Attendance | 71,088[2] | ||||||||||||||||||
| Ceremonies | |||||||||||||||||||
| National anthem | Lady Gaga | ||||||||||||||||||
| Coin toss | Joe Montana, Marcus Allen, Fred Biletnikoff, Jim Plunkett, Jerry Rice, Steve Young | ||||||||||||||||||
| Halftime show | Coldplay feat. Beyoncé and Bruno Mars with Mark Ronson | ||||||||||||||||||
| TV in the United States | |||||||||||||||||||
| Network | CBS | ||||||||||||||||||
| Announcers | Jim Nantz (play-by-play) Phil Simms (analyst) Tracy Wolfson and Evan Washburn (sideline reporters) | ||||||||||||||||||
| Nielsen ratings | 46.6 (national) 53.9 (Denver) 55.9 (Charlotte) U.S. viewership: 111.9 million est. avg.,[3] 167.0 million est. total[4] | ||||||||||||||||||
| Market share | 72 (national) | ||||||||||||||||||
| Cost of 30-second commercial | $5.01 million | ||||||||||||||||||
The Most Valuable Player of Denver’s 24–10 triumph over Carolina sorts through the disarray, hoping to avert the worst Super Bowl wardrobe malfunction since Janet Jackson flashed America at halftime 12 years ago. Miller eyes a sequined black-and-gold jacket that looks like something Janet’s brother Michael might have worn in the “Thriller” video, even if this championship tilt was decidedly not that. “I might as well,” Miller smiles, as he tugs the coat on.
•
Somehow, Miller remains composed. He adjusts his black-and-gold bow tie. On the ride, he is asked about everything he went through, the mistakes he made, the obstacles he overcame. ... The torn ACL in his right knee that forced him to miss Super Bowl XLVIII, where the Seahawks hammered his teammates 43–8 two years ago. The six-game suspension that same season for violating the NFL’s drug policy. (Miller maintained then that he did “nothing wrong.”) And even further back, to his early years at Texas A&M, when coaches tried to convert him from linebacker to fullback and suspended him from the spring game of his second season on account of his immaturity.
On that afternoon, eight years ago, he pointed his pickup toward his hometown of DeSoto, Texas. He made it only as far as Hearne, 140-odd miles from home, when his father, Von Sr., called and insisted that his namesake turn the car around.
Miller cried that day, just as he shed tears the night before the Super Bowl as he listened to DeMarcus Ware and Peyton Manning address the Broncos. He knew that Ware had endured 11 seasons before reaching the title game. He knew that Manning could be playing in the final contest of his 18-year career. He listened as both players outlined how rare an opportunity lay in front of them, how much it meant, and he wanted to “run onto the field and hit someone right then.”
An international audience of 111.9 million witnessed what Miller first showcased when he pointed that truck back toward A&M, totaling 31 sacks over the next three seasons. “His athleticism was like watching The Matrix,” says Dave Kennedy, his strength coach with the Aggies. “He could bend so far backward he could limbo under an 18-inch bar. He was a freak among freaks.”
The freak show continued in Santa Clara, right down to the moment Miller injured his left knee while chasing Newton in the third quarter, slipped on a brace and then went back out and continued chasing and sacking and mocking Newton’s signature celebration with dab after triumphant dab. People called me undersized,” he says. “I didn’t weigh enough. Play fullback. All these things. I always knew I’d end up here. I spoke this into existence.”
Archie hugged his wife and said, “Hey, this really has been fun with this guy. Let’s see what happens.”
If the final minutes of the 50th Super Bowl were also the final minutes of what was undoubtedly a Hall of Fame career, then the Broncos’ quarterback provided America with one last Peyton Manning Face. This was the stoic Peyton: The QB stood on the sideline—by himself, and yet surrounded by TV cameras—gazing into the distance. He didn’t appear to be looking anywhere but inward.
The game he played against the Panthers well represented his season: a meager 13 of 23 completions, 141 passing yards, an interception and two fumbles (one lost), and only one third-down conversion in 14 attempts. Denver’s 194 offensive yards were the fewest by any team ever to win a Super Bowl. But those weren’t the numbers that mattered. What mattered was 39, Manning’s age, which makes him the oldest starting passer to win the Big Game. What mattered was two, as in the number of franchises he has led to championships, an NFL first. What mattered was 200, as in his NFL victory total, vaulting him past Brett Favre for the most ever by a quarterback. “This game was like this season,” Manning said. “It tested our toughness, our resilience and our unselfishness.”
And to think, for Manning, it almost never happened. At the conclusion of last season, he flew to New Orleans to assess his future with both his family and his trainer, Mackie Shilstone. The year had ended poorly. The night before the Broncos had played the Chargers in mid-December, Manning was so sick that he required four bags of IV fluids. Then he tore a muscle in his right quad on a rollout while he was dehydrated. The injury bothered him the rest of the season, so much so that his father, Archie, says, “I’m not sure he should even have been playing.” The Broncos—listless, lifeless—fell to Manning’s former team, the Colts, in the divisional round.
Peyton actually considered retiring then, Archie says. Last January, Denver replaced coach John Fox with Gary Kubiak, an offensive guru who favored the run and deep throws and play-action when he passed—which, for the older, immobile Manning, didn’t exactly play to his strengths. “It was pretty obvious they were going to change systems,” Archie says, “and that was going to be a big transition for him.”
Three factors cemented Manning’s return: He’d thrown 36 touchdowns before his injury; he thought he still had it. He liked that Kubiak preferred to run the ball. And he felt he’d recovered well from the thigh injury.
The adjustment per iod in early 2015, though, looked like a blooper reel for a quarterback who had played one year too long. The Broncos’ run game sputtered. And the offense was further compromised when Manning aggravated the plantar fascia near his left heel. (It was already bothering Peyton, Archie says, at their Manning Passing Academy event last July.) In the first nine weeks Manning threw 17 interceptions (against just nine touchdowns), including four picks on Nov. 15 against the Chiefs, during which Kubiak did the unthinkable and benched him. “Those last couple games, he admitted to me that he shouldn’t have been playing,” says Archie.
In the seven weeks that followed, general manager John Elway only saw Manning in one of two places: He was either in the trainer’s room, huddled with head trainer Steve Antonopulos, or on an empty practice field, throwing to Jordan Taylor, a rookie practice squad receiver whom Manning rewarded before Super Bowl week with a custom charcoal gray suit.
The trick for Manning was staying off his foot enough to allow for it to heal while getting in enough work to remain sharp. He spoke regularly with Kubiak, providing almost daily updates, but Elway mostly left him alone. So did Manning’s older brother, Cooper, who says, “He was not in a great mood. He didn’t like being on the side, not working with the guys, missing the routine.”
The twist: The time off benefited Manning in ways he could never have expected. It forced him to reflect on and adjust to a foreign role that would have sounded blasphemous two seasons ago. Peyton Manning, game manager. He didn’t need to win games so much as he needed not to lose them.
Three weeks later, on the night before the Broncos played the favored Patriots in the AFC Championship Game, Archie and Olivia took a moment. Their eyes welled with tears as they acknowledged what Peyton refused to say publicly, even on Sunday night: that the game could be his last. Archie hugged his wife and said, “Hey, this really has been fun with this guy. Let’s see what happens.”
Four years later, Manning spent the week of Super Bowl 50 avoiding the R word. He didn’t discuss retirement with Archie, or with Cooper, or with his teammates. He sounded just about his age, sharing a story about how he’ll eventually need a hip replacement. He spoke of his right arm as if giving a eulogy: “My arm has not been the same since I was injured four years ago. ... It’s got a few yards on it, miles on it.”
But teammates—the defense in particular—didn’t need the Manning of five years ago. They just needed the Manning who came back in January, no longer great, but good enough. ***
When Phillips arrived a year later, in January 2015, he wasn’t the final piece of the defensive puzzle so much as the person who fit all the pieces together. He simplified the Broncos’ D, replacing Jack Del Rio’s complicated read-and-react approach with an aggressive but simple scheme based on one edict: attack the ball. He deployed Miller and Ware like twin tornados from the edges, mixed man and zone coverages, and sought out system players wherever he could find them, like backup safety Shiloh Keo, whom Phillips recruited after a Twitter exchange earlier this season.
Meanwhile, on the other side of a curtain drawn to separate the teams, Phillips climbed atop a podium and said his father would have been proud that “we kicked the door down.” In his 45th season as a coach, in his first Super Bowl since 1990 (also as Denver’s coordinator), with four of his sisters screaming from the fifth row of the stands, he secured his first ring.
“Not bad for an old man,” said Laurie. She meant her husband, but she just as easily could have meant Manning. Or Ware. . . . Or two quarterbacks who roomed together on the road from 1983 to ’91.
***
“This season took 20 years off my life,” says Elway. “But Gary added what we needed: toughness. Our team may not always play well for 60 minutes. But we have played hard every game for 60 minutes.”
How the hell did John Elway and Gary Kubiak end up here? With parallel paths that diverged and then rejoined. Because one man lost his father. Because the other suffered a mini-stroke on national television.
That’s how this all started. The QBs bonded over The Andy Griffith Show, binge-watching in hotel rooms. They did everything together—golf, family dinners, film study, practices. Even their lockers were side by side.
Sunday was the only day that their relationship wasn’t that of equals. Elway was the star, the quarterback who led the Broncos to five Super Bowl appearances in 16 years. Kubiak? He aided Elway from the shadows, first as his backup, then as a coach, from 1995 to ’98. Kubiak was Denver’s offensive coordinator when Elway and the Broncos trounced the Falcons, 34–19, to win Super Bowl XXXIII in ’99. He saw the physical toll the game had exacted on Elway, who missed four starts that final season with a hamstring injury and torn rib cartilage. Elway looked more relieved than elated at the end. While everyone pegged Kubiak for the head coach he would become (with the Texans in 2006), few expected Elway to remain in football. But a man like Elway, competitive to the core, can only play so much golf and buy so many car dealerships, and in ’01 he decided to return. His father, Jack, died of a heart attack in April of that year, but before he passed, he spent the last month of his life with his son, passing on every lesson he learned over decades of coaching and scouting college and professional football players. His final piece of advice: Build around a quarterback.
“The fans had lost trust in our football team,” Ellis goes on, alluding to a 12-year period, after Elway retired, in which the Broncos won more than 11 games just once. “John opened the door to regain that trust.”
• Elway signed Manning from the Colts in 2012, the same quarterback who’d been drafted No. 1 in 1998, Elway’s final season. True to his father’s advice, the GM retooled around his franchise passer. That started with the defensive upgrades and continued when he fired Fox, replacing him with an old friend before this season. “John was doing that when he was playing,” says Terrell Davis, his former teammate. “John was the one putting players in the offense. I wouldn’t say he was in control of personnel, but basically, if you didn’t play [to John’s standards], you were out of there.”
Kubiak had decamped to Houston from 2006 through ’13. His record there when the Texans fired him: 61–64. Then there was the mini-stroke, suffered as he walked to the locker room at halftime of a Sunday Night Football game in his final season, when the then 52-year-old staggered and collapsed and his eyes rolled back in his head. He left the field on a stretcher and was taken to the hospital in an ambulance. The incident forever changed him. He cut back on his hours and delegated to assistants. “But the core of Kubiak,” says Davis, who spent Super Bowl week around his old team, “is still the same.”
pull Manning when injury and age rendered him ineffective. Who wasn’t afraid to play Osweiler, an apprentice of four seasons who guided the Broncos down the stretch.
In Week 15, Kubiak stood before his team following a 34–27 road loss to the Steelers. Ellis had never seen him that emotional, and they’ve known each other for more than 20 years. “Are you guys in this thing?” Kubiak pleaded. “Are you with me?” The Broncos won their next four straight, each by seven points or fewer, mirroring the theme of their season—they went 11–3 in those contests, an NFL record for such wins—to reach the Super Bowl.
“This season took 20 years off my life,” says Elway, the first person in NFL history to win a Super Bowl as a QB and GM. “But Gary added what we needed: toughness. Our team may not always play well for 60 minutes. But we have played hard every game for 60 minutes.”
Late Sunday night, after the confetti had fallen and the Lombardi Trophy had been hoisted, it was Kubiak whom reporters surrounded while Elway did his best to stay in the background. The band—Elway, Kubiak, Phillips, Ellis—was back together, silverware in hand. Everything was perfect. Except for one thing. ***
Minutes after the end of Super Bowl 50, Broncos owner Pat Bowlen’s wife, Annabel, their seven children and Pat’s siblings all gather around a laptop. Pat is back in Colorado, staring back at his family from 1,250 miles away. They talk; he listens. Pat had watched the Super Bowl on the big-screen television in his bedroom, but no one in his family could know for certain whether he’d grasped what had taken place. “I like to think he could sense what was going on,” says Ellis.
Paul Tagliabue, the NFL’s commissioner from 1989 through 2006, saw the league change dramatically in four areas over his tenure—TV revenue, labor peace, stadium construction and international growth. “Pat might have been the only owner who had a major role in every one of those four areas,” Tagliabue says. “I worked with over 100 owners. I would put Pat in the top five.”
Those close to Bowlen don’t want to share publicly the details of his health. They just know that eventually he stopped going to Denver’s practice facility every day—literally Monday through Sunday—unable to complete the ritual he’d followed for more than 25 years.
At NFL owners’ meetings, Ellis sits in the seat that Bowlen once occupied, right across the table from Cowboys oligarch Jerry Jones. “I like not to think about [the Alzheimer’s],” says Jones. “I still feel Pat’s presence sitting there across from me. I don’t want to think about it any other way.” “The disease is so wicked and unfair,” says Ellis. “Here’s a guy who had so much to offer, and the disease—it takes away your mind and it takes away your life. It took away what Pat loved more than anything. He loved this team. He loved his players. I should say loves. He would have said that this team has an esprit de corps. For him not to be able to share that anymore, it’s just not fair.”
In October, Ellis drove to Bowlen’s house to share some news: The 71-year-old would be inducted into the franchise’s Ring of Honor on Nov. 1, when the Broncos hosted the undefeated Packers. A smirk surfaced on Bowlen’s face. “Now, why the hell would you guys want to do that?” he asked.
What a glorious day that was, though. Denver decimated Green Bay 29–10, improving to 7–0. Annabel addressed the crowd. That’s the one ceremony Ellis can remember where no one seemed to leave their seats. Bowlen, in the end, could not attend. But Ebersol flew in for the ceremony, and four hours before kickoff he was invited to the Bowlen home. Pat was having a decent day. The two
Bowlen, in the end, could not attend. But Ebersol flew in for the ceremony, and four hours before kickoff he was invited to the Bowlen home. Pat was having a decent day. The two men, friends of more than 20 years, spoke for 40 minutes, Ebersol doing most of the talking. “In so many ways, he was still the Pat I knew,” says Ebersol. “And he said two things that were so Pat.”
Says Ebersol, “He always used to say that.”
The second, as Ebersol prepared to leave for the stadium: “Please stay.” The two men talked for another 15 minutes. “Will you come back?” Bowlen asked.
“Yes.”
They made plans for a follow-up trip. “As tough as it all is, I still feel the essence of him there,” says Ebersol. “Those eyes! At no point did I not have Pat Bowlen’s eyes staring at me, with him listening and trying to pick up everything I said. That’s the same way he was in every deal I had with him.”
Three months later, there stood Elway, atop the stage in Santa Clara, trophy in hand. There’s really only one thing he could have said in that moment, and here he screamed it.
“This one’s for Pat!” ***
The Broncos’ postgame party unfolds at the same Santa Clara Marriott where Elway celebrated his first wedding, 22 years ago. Flo Rida performs near the cigar-rolling station, a photo area and a lavish buffet. Befitting the crowd, there are both vegetable cups and Jell-O shots. And strobe lights. Outside, Talib stands with two gold Coors Light bottles in hand, the moment recalling one of the famous Coors slogans—Turn it loose! Which is precisely what the Broncos’ defense did against the Panthers.
Manning is nowhere to be seen. He left the game with his family, without confirming his retirement or his return. It seems likely that he could follow his general manager’s career path: win a second Super Bowl and call it quits.
Part of Archie wants Peyton to return. And part of him wants Peyton to retire. He knows as well as anyone the toll the NFL takes on every player, no exceptions. In the last two years alone, Archie has had a back fusion, a knee replacement and neck surgery. Just last week his good friend Ken Stabler, the former Raiders QB who died at age 69 from colon cancer last July, was found to be in the advanced stages of chronic traumatic encephalopathy, which is believed to be caused by repeated blows to the head. Von Miller’s Wild Ride didn’t end in college, in Denver, or in Santa Clara—even with all the diversions and missteps along the way. This playoff run solidified the beginning of one era (Miller’s) and the ending of another (Manning’s). On Sunday, with an audience enraptured by his ascendency, Miller found Newton, repeatedly. He found his moxie and the perfect game plan. And, most important, for television purposes, he also found his pants.
Additional reporting by Ben Baskin, Greg A. Bedard and Austin Murphy
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