Kyle Busch is a big football fan when he isn’t driving a race car.
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When asked recently whether he would hypothetically pick legendary NFL quarterback and seven-time Super Bowl winner Tom Brady as a fantasy spotter, you might say Busch called an audible.
Instead, the two-time NASCAR Cup champ, who is in his third season now with Richard Childress Racing (and remains unsigned for next year), would rather have former Indianapolis Colts star QB and two-time Super Bowl winner Peyton Manning as the guy he’d like telling him what to do on the racetrack.
Of course, it doesn’t hurt that Manning wore the same uniform number – No. 18 – as the car number Busch drove during his previous 15-season tenure with Joe Gibbs Racing before moving to RCR.
“Peyton Manning,” Busch immediately and emphatically said recently. “He is probably one of the best game-callers ever.
“He would be able to maybe look at certain situations and be able to pick up on things, whereas another celebrity might not be able to, and I would kind of enjoy his voice in (your) head.”
But not Brady, who many consider the greatest QB of all time?
“Tom’s not far behind,” Busch said. “I think Peyton had better games in which he made a lot more calls himself over his coaching staff, whereas Tom relied a lot on his coaching staff. But obviously, you have to have instinct, and he doesn’t lack in that.”
It’s not the first time Busch has used the Brady-Manning analogy.
Following his last race at JGR at the end of the 2022 season, Busch equated his departure and move to RCR to Brady’s move from the New England Patriots to a two-year stint with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, and Manning’s move from the Colts to the Denver Broncos for the final four seasons of his NFL career.
“I’m kind of looking at it as the Tom Brady-Peyton Manning aspect, where they left great teams, great organizations, where they won championships, and they went on and were able to win championships somewhere else.
“So I’d like to think that I still have that opportunity to be able to do that with RCR.”
