Belichick loves him some Peyton Manning

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“In so many ways,” Belichick says, “because of his talent and because of how good he is at the strategy and the execution of his offense, it is the ultimate challenge.”

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Belichick: “He’s so difficult to play against, so well-versed in every single part of the game. I’ll give you an example. I’m watching the Broncos play the Chargers in the playoffs, and see San Diego jump offsides five times. And I’m thinking, ‘Jeez, how the hell can these guys be offsides, they’ve played him two times already in the regular season and even beaten him once?’
“So I went back and watched the TV copies of two or three games before the San Diego game. Not just watched them so much as listened to them. I listened to the rhythm of his cadence in those games and then I listened to his cadence in that first playoff game, and realized he’d changed, like, four different cadences. And got ’em with that! And you know something? He would have gotten me, too.

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“With (Manning) it is every ... single … thing. It’s cadence. It’s formations. It’s little adjustments he’ll have guys make in pass routes. A protection on an inside-the-20-yard-line play. The changes he’ll make on third down, or with play action. But it’s all within the context of their offense. And it’s not 50 different things. Maybe there’ll be five plays in a game that you’ll think, ‘I haven’t seen that before.’ Or: ‘I haven’t seen that in several weeks.’ But you know you’ve seen all the rest of it before, and somehow he’s still making it work.

“He changes little things as he goes, and they end up becoming big things, even if it’s something as small as a snap count. And it’s totally him. This is his offense, the one he ran in Indianapolis. He’s the one managing the game. You’ll see him giving a hand signal to one of his receivers and the guy will run a slant. The next week he’ll give the exact same hand signal, only the same guy won’t run a slant, he’ll run a ‘go.’ You can never zero in on him the way you can with other teams. You play him honest, but still worry about everything.”

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“There haven’t been many games you look at in total and say that he and his offense were the reason his team lost the game. The Baltimore (playoff) game last year, c’mon, he got beat because the defense gave up a big play. I look at him the way we looked at Joe Montana: You beat him with an entire team game. The more you can keep him on the sideline, the more pressure you can put on him to make a play when he’s back on the field.”

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I asked Bill Belichick Wednesday about the fun of going up against Manning across all the years.
He said, “I wouldn’t call it fun.”

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