super bowl xliv
QBs cast from same mold
They wept for joy the night it happened, in the place of sorrows.
Inside the ravaged old Superdome, grown men cried salt tears when the Vikings finally went down, an entire city bawling like babies or the next thing to it. They were there when Katrina drowned the Lower 9th Ward and tore the roof off the Dome. They read all the stories about how people died inside and died outside and got stranded on their rooftops, waving piteously for help.
And now here was Drew Brees, the patron Saint, holding up the NFC championship trophy as he grinned fit to burst, and, oh my God, the Saints are going to the Super Bowl, Aints no more, every paper bag lifted from every head forever.
And 800 miles to the north, Peyton Manning, the favorite son, watched, and maybe his brothers were with him and his dad, too – ol’ Archie, whose iconic No. 8 is not officially retired but which no Saint has worn since Archie left 28 years ago with every passing record in the Saints’ book.
“I enjoyed seeing Bourbon Street so empty in the third quarter and then seeing it full after the game,” Peyton said.
That would have been a few hours after he hoisted his own conference championship trophy, of course.
Unlike Brees, he barely cracked a smile.
They could not be more different, you know.
Brees is the man nobody wanted, too short to succeed according to the smart guys, spurned by his beloved Texas Longhorns and chased north to Purdue, where all he did was quarterback the Boilermakers to their only Rose Bowl of the last 43 years. The Chargers threw him over the side for Philip Rivers when he tore up his shoulder in the last game of his option year. Nick Saban decided he didn’t want him in Miami. The Saints, 3-13 and not all that sure about their future in a city ruined by Katrina, decided what the hell and signed him.
And Peyton Manning?
Well, all he is, frankly, is the best quarterback of his generation, and some say the best ever. Raised to greatness by one of America’s great families, the son of a Southern icon, he’s a quarterbacking savant who, legend has it, can’t work an electric can opener but can slice open the most complicated of defenses in the time it takes to write this sentence.
And yet here they are in the same place, Super Bowl XLIV, with more in common than perhaps any two quarterbacks who ever faced each other in the Big Game.
Their numbers this season – Manning completed 68.8 percent of his passes for 4,500 yards and 33 touchdowns; Brees 70.6 percent for 4,388 yards and 34 scores – are virtually identical. Their instincts for giving back – there’s a high school football field in New Orleans named for Brees, and a children’s hospital in Indianapolis named for Manning – are virtually identical as well.
Manning, the favorite son, flew a planeload of supplies to New Orleans with his brother Eli in the wake of Katrina. Brees raised money to rebuild not only the football field with his name on it but also a weight room and scoreboard at the Katrina-flattened Lusher Charter School and has become so much a part of the city’s fabric he’s been named the 2010 King of Bacchus for New Orleans’ biggest Mardi Gras parade, the first athlete ever to be so honored.
“My wife (Brittany) and I felt like a part of the community quickly because of the way we were embraced by the city,” Brees says. “I’ve had more people come up to me on the street who tell me, ‘Thank you for being a part of our community. Thank you for what you have done – and, by the way, good luck Sunday.’ ”
The favorite son seconds the sentiment.
“What Drew, and really the entire Saints team have meant to that community, has been extremely impressive,” Manning says. “Being a fellow New Orleanian, I appreciate it. Eli appreciates it. Eli and I both give back, charity-wise, to New Orleans, but the players that live there, guys that aren’t from there, have adopted that city as their hometown.
“You certainly appreciate that, people kind of adopting a city as their hometown, putting their monies and efforts behind it. Drew has spearheaded that. He’s been the leader of that team on the field and off the field and I certainly appreciate that.”
The story is perhaps fictional, but it always starts like this: When Olivia Manning was pregnant with Eli, she and Peyton and Cooper, the oldest Manning sibling, were sitting in the stands watching Archie and the Saints lose another one. People were booing. People were wearing paper bags on their heads.
In one version of the story, Cooper and Peyton asked if they could wear paper bags, too. In the other version, they asked if they could boo along with everyone else.
Amounts to the same thing.
The Saints, who didn’t have a winning season in the first 20 years of their existence, were awful.
“Back at the time I was growing up it was a lot of brown paper bags, a lot of blackouts,” says Colts receiver Reggie Wayne, who also grew up in New Orleans. “Had to listen to the game on the radio.”
So you can understand why the Manning family, Peyton included, has embraced Brees as fervently as the rest of the city. Cooper Manning took Brees under his wing when Brees came to town, and now they’re best buds. Cooper’s wife, Ellen, Olivia Manning and Brittany Brees work out at the same gym. Archie and Drew have known each other since Drew was in high school.
The Mannings are New Orleans royalty. Brees is the patron Saint who exorcised the boos and the paper bags forever and is working hard to exorcise the legacy of Katrina.
The city and everything that goes with it binds them together – even as the Mannings, naturally, prepare to root for Peyton in the Super Bowl, and Peyton, the favorite son, prepares to break the city’s heart.
“New Orleans is obviously a huge part of my life and Eli’s life,” Peyton says, with no particular irony. “I know the city is excited. I’m excited for the city.”
So is the patron Saint.
He sits on all these boards now and puts all this time and energy into the rebirth of the city, and yet even now he’s sometimes taken aback by what it all means, going to the Super Bowl with the Saints. Part of this is because, as he likes to say, so many players on this team are “castaways,” free agents no one else wanted. Yet here they found a place that not only wanted them, but needed them.
“I’ve met season ticket-holders since New Orleans started in 1967,” Brees says. “For so many of them, just to have waited so long through so many tough times to this point, and what people went through in New Orleans post-Katrina.
“It’s so much more than just a game to us. We feel like we are playing for so much more than just to win a game for our organization or team. We’re playing for an entire city and region.”
And for every favorite son, friend or foe.