Lars Anderson - The Mannings: The Fall and Rise of a Football Family

High above the grass football field in Santa Clara, California, the family fidgeted and fretted inside a luxury suite on the seventh level of Levis Stadium. It was early in the evening of February 7, 2016. Archie, Olivia, Cooper, and Eli Manning peered through the gathering darkness down at the field, where the oldest player in the gamea thirty-nine-year-old man who just two months earlier Archie had believed would never take another NFL snap, a man in the deep winter of his careerwas about to enjoy one last moment of summer.

With 3:08 remaining in Super Bowl 50, the Denver Broncos led the Carolina Panthers 2210. Running back C. J. Anderson of the Broncos had just scored on a 2-yard touchdown plunge. Now Denver would try for a 2-point conversion. Lining up in the shotgun formation seven yards behind center, Peyton Manning received the snap. He took one step back, turned to his right, and flung a pass into the end zone.

As the ball spiraled through the cool California night, there were so many memories that filled the Manning family suite on the seventh level of the stadium.

There was Archie bringing little Peyton into the New Orleans Saints locker room when Peyton was five years old. Peyton and his older brother, Cooper, then seven, would hunt for the ankle-and-wrist tape that the players had discarded onto the floor. Theyd wad the strips into their version of a football and then head out into the empty Superdome, where the boys played one-on-one football, their grunts and giggles rising into the far reaches of the stadium. Archie would sometimes join them, beginning Peytons education in the art of throwing a football. Archie had been a constant presence in Peytons lifehe sat in the top row of the bleachers at his high school games with his bulky video camera resting on his right shoulderbecause he vowed to be the father to his own kids that he didnt have.

There was Olivia driving her boys to hundreds of football practices in New Orleans. She would never forget the piles and piles of muddied clothesand mounds of jockstrapsthat she fed into their washing machine. Olivia, the dimple-cheeked, sweet-smiling, long-legged homecoming queen at Ole Miss in the fall of 1970, also was a fixture in the stands throughout Peytons football career. It was likely that no mom in the history of the sport had watched her sons play more football games than Olivia, and just the sight of her in the stands was calming to all her children, but especially to Peyton, especially on those long-ago Friday nights at high school stadiums throughout Louisiana.

There was Cooper catching passes from Peyton in their one season together of high school football. The autumn of 1991 was the best time of Peytons football life for one reason: he shared it with his big brother, Cooper, his best friend. Less than a year later Cooper would have to quit playing because of a spinal condition, and the words he would pen in a handwritten letter to PeytonI would like to live my dream of playing football through youwould be the core inspiration to his younger brother for the next quarter century.

There was young Eli begging teenage Peyton to throw passes to him when Eli was eight years old. When thirteen-year-old Peyton finally caved in to his little brothers pestering, Peyton would grab a few pillows from a living room couch, stuff them into Elis shirt, then go outside to the front lawn and rifle lasers at his brother, who would engulf the high-velocity balls in his padded chest before being knocked over like a bowling pin. The tourists on the buses that rolled by the Manning house in the Garden District on their way to see novelist Anne Rices mansion down the street would wonder aloud, Why is that bigger boy punishing that little one?

At Levis Stadium, the last throw of Peytons career, for a 2-point conversion, flew 7 yards over the middle into the arms of wide receiver Bennie Fowler, sealing Denvers 2410 win in Super Bowl 50. As soon as Fowler hauled in the pass, Peytonwho had made $247 million in NFL contracts alone, the most in league historyflashed a gleaming smile just like he used to when he threw touchdown passes in the front yard in games on First Street, which Archie filmed with his ever-present VHS camera.

Peyton was now the oldest quarterback ever to win the biggest game in American sports.

It ends for everybody. For Archie, who since 2014 has had neck and back surgeries and a knee replacementthe price of an NFL careerthe end came in 1984 after thirteen NFL seasons and playing on teams that never had a winning record or advanced to the playoffs.

Father and mother sensed the end was coming for Peyton. Two weeks before Super Bowl 50, Archie and Olivia visited their middle son in Denver. On the eve of the AFC championship game between the Broncos and the Patriotsa game Denver would win 2018 with Peyton contributing two touchdown passesboth parents grew emotional when they reflected on Peytons career. Embracing his wife, his eyes wet, Archie told Olivia, Hey, this really has been fun with this guy.