Johnette Howard

You can slice and dice the strategy 1,500 ways, but the story of Super Bowl XLIV begins and ends with Peyton Manning’s brain. The Indianapolis Colts quarterback has played 11 NFL seasons, won four MVP awards, and his games fill hundreds of hours of videotape. Computer algorithms have been written to analyze his tendencies. Yet that brain of Manning’s continues to be the most indomitable, indecipherable force in his sport. It’s the single greatest weapon in pro football.

It wasn’t always this way. But the longer the 33-year-old Manning has played, the more amazing his hard-drive of a mind has become.

The New Orleans Saints will be the latest team to try to outwit Manning. The way the Saints hit Vikings quarterback Brett Favre high and low, late, hard and often while winning last Sunday’s NFC Championship game, it was as if they had some pre-determined strategy to knock Favre out of the game, not just sack him. And if a penalty or two came, so be it.

Maybe the Saints will try that tactic against Manning in the Super Bowl, too. Or maybe Jets head coach Rex Ryan will send the Saints a DVD of last Sunday’s AFC Championship game and a three-word memo: “Are you nuts?”

Ryan’s top-ranked Jets defense was the only squad that blitzed opponents more than New Orleans this season. But last Sunday after a flash of early success for the Jets — two quick sacks and a fumble recovery — Manning had an aha! moment that sent the game spiraling away from New York. It happened on Indy’s last drive before the half, with the Colts’ trailing 17-6, the ball on their own 20 and just over two minutes left.

The Colts needed only 58 seconds and four plays — one of them a beautiful, 46-yard rainbow from Manning to rookie Austin Collie — to finish a quick-strike touchdown and the Colts looked rattled no more. Indianapolis was still trailing by four but the feeling Manning had just created was palpable: This game is over.

There goes Manning’s brain again.

“He’s figured it out,” Manning’s father Archie said, watching from a stadium suite.

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“I felt the momentum shift and then I don't think it really mattered where the ball was, we were going to struggle stopping them,” the Jets’ Ryan sighed.

“At the line, you just knew every check he was making was exactly the right one,” Colts offensive tackle Charlie Johnson told Yahoo!Sports.com.

The Saints should note when the Jets brought six or more pass rushers Manning was eight-for-10 for 160 yards, a touchdown and a white-hot 152.1 passer rating. The Colts scored on four of their last five drives and won, 31-17. Afterward, the Jets admitted Manning's dissection of them wasn't a total surprise. In the Colts’ December regular-season meeting against New York, the Jets were stunned that Manning was able to call out the Jets' defenders and their assignments — “21 is dropping. 57 is coming. 36 is the ‘Will’” — all before the snap.

“His brain is like a computer,” Jets safety Eric Smith said.

How Manning repeatedly pulls it off and creates that sense of inevitability is the fascinating part.

“There are so many answers to how Peyton does it on the fly, but I’ll give you the best one,” says former NFL and Super Bowl-winning quarterback Trent Dilfer, now a terrific analyst for ESPN. “He consumes, processes and delivers probably 10 times more info than any other quarterback in the league. There are a lot of other guys that handle a lot, but nobody like Peyton Manning. On every play he may come to the line with a two- or three-play call sequence, and another catalogue of plays behind that if he still doesn’t like what he sees. His brain is like a mad scientist’s. In the moment of truth, he’s able to process that enormous amount of information and dumb it down to its barest essence and then execute. It’s incomprehensible to me, but in that moment he can reduce the game to its very simplest and say, ‘I’ll take on this guy. Take this shot. Get this completion here’ — whatever he needs.”