Article from Peter King during the Colts Super Bowl practices:
I want to give you a couple of examples of what makes Manning tick, and what drives him to be so good, from what happened in the Colts' Super Bowl practices.
There are two things I saw last week that I'll never forget.
I had the good fortune of seeing the Colts prepare for the Super Bowl last Wednesday, Thursday and Friday at the Miami Dolphins' training facility. Each Super Bowl week, the Pro Football
Writers of America assigns one of its members to cover each team's practices, to report for all the press the basics and some color of the workouts. After each practice, I wrote about a 600-word dispatch, which was distributed in the press center.
Last Thursday, the CBS pre- and in-game crew, including Dan Marino, watched most of practice, and I led my report with one of the guys Manning admires, Marino, watching him work at his old practice fields. The last thing the Colts do every Thursday is the two-minute drill, first offense versus first defense, and here's what I wrote in the PFWA pool report:
Manning had a little of the clutch Marino left in him at the end of the two-hour, nine-minute practice, conducted with crowd noise piped in from speakers on the sidelines. On fourth-and-10 with nine seconds left in the two-minute drill that closes every Thursday practice for the Colts, Manning, working with the first-team offense, drilled a perfect 23-yard touchdown strike to backup wideout Aaron Moorehead in the back of the end zone.
"Peyton practices like that every week ... like it's the Super Bowl,'' said coach Tony Dungy at the end of practice. "It rubs off on the entire offense. This is about our 20th week of practice, and I think the defense stopped the offense once or twice all year. When they stop them, we give out game balls.''
A Colts safety, and I don't recall whom, took his helmet off and slammed it to the ground. This was big stuff, really big to the Colts, on both sides of the ball. As Manning walked off the field after the practice Thursday, I intercepted him and said: "What a great drive to watch. Pretty intense," I said.
"Yeah," Manning said. "I wanted it. Wanted it bad."
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This type of attitude is one reason why the Colts were Super Bowl champions. The competitive spirit and drive to excellence every single day seperates the contenders from the pretenders.
