Under a father’s watchful eye

It was the night before the AFC championship game in Indianapolis, and the quarterback was tossing and turning, trying his best not to think about the enormity of the situation.

He woke up the next morning after a fitful sleep and immediately focused on the game. He opened the local newspaper and took one look at the front-page headline: “The Biggest Game Of His Life.”

The quarterback shook his head.

“I mean, can you put any more pressure on one person?” Archie Manning asked rhetorically about his son, Colts’ quarterback Peyton Manning.

“Sometimes, you wonder how he deals with it. My wife and I look at each other sometimes and say, `Is this really fair?’ But it goes with the territory.”

Welcome to the inner world of the most famous quarterback family in NFL history, where dealing with pressure is part of everyday life.

Funny thing is, the guy with the most pressure seems to deal with it the best of all. It’s his father who has more trouble coming to terms with all the scrutiny.

“Peyton and I never really talk about it,” Archie said, referring to the questions about his son’s performances in big games. “So if he doesn’t talk about it, I don’t talk about it to him. But he’s handled it. That’s the amazing thing. When we see him handling it, well, we’ve got to handle it.”

Peyton’s brilliant rally from an 18-point deficit against the three-time Super Bowl champion New England Patriots, the biggest comeback ever in a conference championship game, went a long way toward answering the incessant criticism of his inability to win the big one. But the respite may be only temporary.

If Manning doesn’t follow up those heroics with a solid performance in Super Bowl XLI against the Chicago Bears next Sunday, then you had better believe the questions will resurface. A turnover-filled effort against Chicago, and it’ll be even worse.

Last week, Manning showed he could win a big game. But now he must prove he can win the big game.

Yes, Archie, “The Biggest Game Of His Life.”

Will Peyton be up to the challenge? The feeling here is that he will be.

Not that he’ll be able to pick apart the Bears the way Phil Simms dominated the Denver Broncos on Super Bowl Sunday 20 years ago. Very few quarterbacks — maybe none — can expect that kind of day against Brian Urlacher’s defense. But you get the feeling that Manning answered enough questions about his big-game mettle — if to no one else but himself — and that he’ll be looser than if he’d gotten here on the coattails of his defense, as he did in the first two weeks of the playoffs.

Manning was not even an ordinary player against the Kansas City Chiefs and Baltimore Ravens, throwing just one touchdown and five interceptions.

But in slaying the Patriots, his playoff nemesis, you sense that Manning overcame a psychological hurdle that will prove invaluable. That he fought back from a 21-3 deficit, after Asante Samuel returned an interception for a touchdown, made it even more rewarding.

“The thing about Peyton is that he competes,” Archie said. “It’s like Tom Brady and a lot of these quarterbacks. They don’t get wrapped up in somebody saying ‘it’s the biggest game of their lives,’ or about what they’ve done in the past. He just goes about his business.”

Archie got the sense that Peyton would have one of his best games against the Patriots, just by the way he carried himself in the days leading up to the game.

“He was loose. He was happy,” Archie said. “I saw him for five minutes the night before the game, and he was studying, like he always does. It’s no different than before any football game.”

It’s too early for Archie to get a read on how Peyton will react this week. The Colts don’t get into Miami until Monday night, and Manning has an entire week of hype to get through. But Archie doesn’t expect much to be different. “He’ll get wrapped up in preparing, because that’s what he does,” Archie said.

The Colts’ late arrival might be part of a plan to try to deal with the enormity of Super Bowl week. Don’t forget that their general manager, Bill Polian, was the architect of the Buffalo Bills’ four consecutive Super Bowl appearances in 1990-93.

Polian saw those teams enjoy the night life of Super Bowl week perhaps a bit too much back in the day, so keeping the Colts away from the madness as long as possible might work to their benefit.

It’s a similar situation to the week before the AFC championship game, when Manning was kept away from the media until two days before the game. An accident? We think not.

Manning can’t possibly hide this week from the spotlight, but that’s OK. At least he’s gotten this far after years of trying.

One more transcendent performance on Sunday, and the question no longer becomes: Can you win the big one? It’ll be more like: How many big ones do you think you can win?