Peyton Manning had a crazy dedication to football and practicing, even to where he’d confuse his center Jeff Saturday with his commitment to be perfect.
Advertisement
The Hall of Famer enjoyed one of the greatest NFL careers by a quarterback, smashing passing records left and right before he eventually retired. His 2013 season is arguably the greatest season by a quarterback ever as he set the records for passing yards and touchdowns in a single season (5,477 and 55), records that still stand today even though the NFL added an extra game to every season this last year.
Manning had a drive to be the best in the game, and he proved that on a daily basis, whether it was during game-time or during practice sessions, Manning wanted to always ensure things were perfect and that his team would be ready for everything.
That drive resulted in two Super Bowl wins and a list of other accolades that landed him in the Hall of Fame.
Peyton Manning had Jeff Saturday confused while running wet ball drills
An integral part of playing in the NFL is knowing that you’ll have to play in all kinds of conditions. Football is the one sport where weather conditions will not stop gameplay.
Come rain, snow, wind, intense heat, or whatever else you can imagine, NFL players will be out on the field giving it their all. Prepping for weather conditions is a big part of a team’s preparation for any matchup, especially preparing for rainy conditions.
Manning recognized this fact and made sure that he had his center, Jeff Saturday, practicing to hand him a ball that may be more slippery. However, sometimes Manning would have Saturday run these drills even when they were playing indoors. The Colts stadium, then the RCA dome, is an indoor field, unbothered by the elements of the outside world. That didn’t matter to Manning, however.
“About once every three weeks, Jeff Saturday and I did a wet ball drill, where we were taking snaps with a ball covered with water. Jeff hated it,” Manning said in the book Super Bowl Blueprints: Hall of Famers Reveal the Keys to Football’s Greatest Dynasties authored by Bill Polian and Vic Carucci. “He just thought it was annoying and irritating because he got soaking wet. The way it worked was, as Jeff was getting ready to snap the ball to me, our equipment managers would spray the ball with the water bottle. Of course, his hands and arms and pants were also getting wet. I remember one time when Jeff said, Why are we doing this? We’re playing in the RCA Dome this week. There’s no chance of it being wet.’ I said, ‘You never know. There might be a leak in the dome. We can’t take any chances. We’ve got to keep doing this drill.’”
In Manning’s first Super Bowl game, he had Saturday practice like that as well.
“Peyton being Peyton, leaving no stone unturned, decided we would practice with a wet ball. As a result, under cloudless skies and 80-degree temperatures all through the week, Jeff Saturday had to snap a soaked football,” Polian would say. “Jeff was not happy.”
