DENVER — There was an emotional Archie Manning, looking all wrung out, near the Broncos’ locker room on Sunday after his son’s team prevailed in a three-hour, 29-minute festival of noise and emotion, the most momentous and likely last of the 17 Tom Brady-Peyton Manning meetings. This had the air of the final game of Peyton Manning’s life early Sunday afternoon, but Manning and the Denver defense sent the script to rewrite.
In a quiet moment just before leaving the stadium, his 4-year-old son Marshall clinging to his legs (“Can we go NOW, Daddy?”), Manning considered this question: Did you think when you walked on the field for warmups today that you might be walking on a football field for the last time as a player?