You’re Brock Osweiler. You have had the luxury of learning under a living legend. You were drafted four years ago with the hope you could be the quarterback of the future.
You have watched Peyton Manning’s 39-year-old body begin to betray him, and the future may be now for you.
Manning won’t be dueling Tom Brady for the 17th time Sunday night. You will be dueling Brady for the first time Sunday night.
All eyes will be on you. Young quarterbacks, especially young quarterbacks making their second NFL start, have been child’s play for Bill Belichick. Manning could spend an eternity telling you all about it, and presumably he has. It took him years before he won the chess match.
Oh, one more thing: The Patriots are 10-0 and want very much to go 11-0. And force Super Bowl 50 to go through Foxborough, Mass.
They’re calling you Kid Brock, I see. You acquitted yourself well in your first start against the Bears. But this will be a Bronco of a different color. This will be your proving ground, your personal Belmont Stakes, the Test of the Champion.
It will tell us whether you have a right to call this your team, whether you have the grace under pressure and the mental toughness and all the other intangibles to be trusted enough by coach Gary Kubiak and general manager John Elway to be considered the quarterback of the present.
You can’t concern yourself with whether Manning can rally his foot and his ribs back strong enough to return as the unquestioned leader. All you can do is worry about Belichick and Brady and let the chips fall where they may. The force of Manning’s personality and aura, and the injustice of losing your job to injury, may yet carry as much weight as whether the powers-that-be privately believe you give the team the best chance to win.
“All I know is that, right now, I’m playing quarterback this week,” you said this week. “Last week, I kept my focus small. I kept it on the Bears defense and it seemed to work pretty well. This week, I know that I’m the starting quarterback Sunday night against the Patriots, so I’m going to keep my focus small, I’m going to focus on the Patriots, and next Monday we can talk about the following week.”
Tight end Owen Daniels was asked how you have been handling the hoopla.
“I think he’s handling it like there is none,” Daniels said by phone. “He hasn’t been distracted by anything, just going about his business like he has been all season, really.”
The game doesn’t seem too big for you.
“In the huddle, real clear, real concise,” Daniels said. “The kind of confidence he has in the huddle, we feel that, so we feel confident in him. We feel confident in the play call.”
It has to be an awkward situation for you. No one ever envisioned a scenario where Peyton Manning could be Wally Pipp. But if you beat the Patriots, if you have yourself another 20-for-27, 250-yard, two-TD game without an interception, at the very least, you will win the popular vote, if not the electoral, and your supporters freely will point out that Manning’s 17 interceptions do not complement this Orange Crush defense.
“A good quality of being a leader is being unselfish, and doing what’s best for the team,” Daniels said. “So both Peyton and Brock, they’re good leaders, really unselfish guys … want to do what’s best for the team. I think Brock’s the type that can answer his opportunity to play his best when he’s given a chance to, so we don’t try to play into all that stuff on the outside.”
But who knows whether Manning will be healthy enough to play at all? Maybe he knows he won’t be able to. Maybe that was why the word already is out that he plans on playing next season. For someone. Everyone seems to think you are a better fit than Manning, who prefers the shotgun, in Kubiak’s offense.
You stand 6-foot-7, so you better believe Belichick will try to cut you down to size. Would he modify his approach to try to bat down passes?
“Like take a step stool out there or something like that? No,” Belichick said.
Manning’s first game against Belichick came on Oct. 8, 2000, a 24-16 loss in Foxborough. Manning was 31-for-54 for 334 yards with one TD and three INTs. It was Manning’s 37th career start.
You have thrown four career TD passes. Brady has four Super Bowl rings. You started just 15 games at Arizona State.
“He’s got a very live arm,” Daniels said, “young, strong arm, and [can] make all the different kinds of throws he needs to make. They’re not always all fastballs, he can put touch on the ball if he needs it, he can put balls on the line if he needs to. … He’s got all the tools needed. Being as big as he is, I think he moves really well. Just his movement and agility inside the pocket and making little slide steps to avoid some rushes to get a good throwing lane, he did all that stuff.”
But now, Darth Belichick and his treacherous trickeration.
“They’re gonna give you some unscouted looks,” Daniels said. “I think he’s aware of all that — he’s probably prepared for the Patriots as many times as I have over the years, it seems like the Broncos have played them once or twice each of the last four years,” Daniels said. “I don’t think he’s any stranger to that preparation.”
It’s your chance to be a stranger in paradise.