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Peyton Manning

Empower Field at Mile High, 1701 Bryant St, Denver, CO

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Peyton Manning spent 14 seasons with the Indianapolis Colts before finishing his career with four more in Denver, and across that 18-year span won a record five NFL MVP awards — no other player in league history has won more than three, a gap that reflects just how long Manning stayed the league's best pure passer relative to his peers. Manning won two Super Bowl championships, one with the Colts (XLI) and one with the Broncos (50), the second coming at age 39, making him the oldest starting quarterback ever to win a Super Bowl. At retirement in 2016 he held the career records for passing yards (71,940) and passing touchdowns (539), both later surpassed by Tom Brady and Drew Brees but standing as the benchmark at the time. His 2013 season with Denver remains one of the greatest single-season passing performances in NFL history: 5,477 passing yards and 55 touchdown passes, both single-season records at the time. Manning was famous for his exhaustive pre-snap preparation, reading defenses and calling audibles at the line so often that his shouted "Omaha!" cadence became a piece of NFL pop culture in its own right. Manning made 14 Pro Bowls across his career and is still widely regarded as the most cerebral quarterback the position has ever seen — a player whose preparation and film study were as central to his greatness as his arm talent, setting a template other quarterbacks have spent years trying to copy.

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