Mannings eager to keep Super Bowls in family
Archie showed Peyton and Eli toughness, then they brought championships
 Reed Saxon / AP Archie Manning, center, the patriarch of America's reigning first family of football, is getting greedy. He wants sons Peyton, right, and Eli to keep going back to the Super Bowl. |
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LOS ANGELES - Archie Manning admits it. He's getting greedy.
The patriarch of America's reigning first family of football wants sons Peyton and Eli to keep going back to the Super Bowl.
Just not at the same time.
The Manning family celebrated Peyton's first NFL championship when the Indianapolis Colts won the 2007 Super Bowl. Then came an encore when Eli guided the upstart New York Giants to this year's title. What's more, each was the game's MVP in this remarkable brother act.
"I'm being greedy here, but I'd love for each to go back to another Super Bowl and each win another Super Bowl or more,'' Archie said. "But as a parent, not against each other. Obviously it would be a long shot, but if they ever played in the Super Bowl against each other, it wouldn't be fun.
"We couldn't celebrate that game because somebody's going to win it, great. But somebody's going to lose it, and that's tough. We couldn't celebrate over the loser.''
The brothers have played one NFL game against each other, with the Colts beating the Giants 26-21 in a 2006 game in which Peyton and Eli had similar statistics. Looking back, Archie said he was glad it was a good game and both played well.
One lingering image from New York's 17-14 Super Bowl victory over the seemingly invincible New England Patriots was Peyton wildly cheering as his kid brother moved the ball downfield for the winning touchdown.
"I was kind of playing the game up there in the stands,'' said the 32-year-old Peyton, five years older than Eli. "It was impressive as a quarterback to see how he played that day, but the fact he was (my brother) made it even more special. I had the same feeling I had when we became champions, was just as happy for Eli when the last second ticked off.''
Eli, who joined his father and brother in Los Angeles to do a commercial for DirecTV NFL Sunday Ticket, said he pulled for his brother the same way a year earlier when the Colts beat the Chicago Bears 29-17 for the title.
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"He had been in the NFL for nine years, close a few times and never getting one. I was fired up for him, rooting hard for him, excited for him,'' Eli said. "He did the same with me this past season. He was screaming and really getting fired up on that final drive.''
Archie, a former standout quarterback at Mississippi, spent more than a decade of with the perennially undermanned New Orleans Saints. He said his sons' Super Bowl victories mean more to him than if he had won one himself.
"You wish wonderful things for your children,'' the 59-year-old father said. "I never got close enough to playing in a Super Bowl to maybe have the regrets that some players do who came so close. We feel real blessed for those two boys to play football, but for them both to play in a Super Bowl, for both of them to win a Super Bowl, we truly feel blessed.''
He and wife Olivia often are asked whether they're the proudest parents around.
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"I'm one of them,'' Archie said with a smile. "Sometimes Olivia and I, when it's quieted down and we're sitting home, we look over at each other and say, 'Can you believe this?'
"Olivia and I didn't get married and say we hope we have boys so we can mold them to be pro football players. We didn't wish for boys or girls, and we have three wonderful children, three boys that have given us a lot of joy. But it wasn't part of the plan to play football. We just tried to raise kids.''
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