'I'm not here to make friends' – Peyton Manning made a promise to teammates during his rookie season and he delivered on it
After four seasons with the Tennessee Vols, quarterback Peyton Manning was selected by the Indianapolis Colts with the No. 1 overall pick in the 1998 NFL Draft. The New Orleans native entered the NFL with high expectations, but no one's expectations were higher than Manning's — for himself and his new teammates. Shortly after Manning […]
After four seasons with the Tennessee Vols, quarterback Peyton Manning was selected by the Indianapolis Colts with the No. 1 overall pick in the 1998 NFL Draft.
The New Orleans native entered the NFL with high expectations, but no one's expectations were higher than Manning's — for himself and his new teammates.
Shortly after Manning arrived in Indianapolis, he made it clear that he wasn't in town to make friends. Instead, his goal was simply to win a championship — a goal he eventually delivered on.
Former Colts tight end Marcus Pollard, who was teammates with Manning from 1998 to 2004, joined the Intangible Podcast this week and he recalled one of his first interactions with Manning in Indy.
"Peyton was very determined," said Pollard. "I can remember when he first got to campus in Indy, we were sitting having lunch, he said to me, and it was so true. When he said it, I said, 'Yeah, buddy, you are doing that'. He said, 'I'm not here to make friends. I'm here to win a championship. That's all I want to do is win a championship. So if I got to be your boy to do it, we ain't gotta necessarily to be boys, but I'm here for one objective, to win a championship'. And he did that.
"The way he approached the game, not that he was a jerk or a butt hole to his teammates, but he was very demanding. This is how I want it done. If I tell you it's Easter, you better hunt eggs. That's the kind of mentality he had. But to me, you can follow leadership like that, because it wasn't demeaning, it wasn't disrespectful. It was, 'Here's what I like, here's what I want. I'm the quarterback, this is what we're gonna do'. And to have that kind of leadership to me was very refreshing for me. It didn't bother me at all — because I knew what the job description was. And I knew who was gonna be the catalyst to get us to where we needed to go, and it was gonna be Peyton. And everybody's gonna listen to what he had to say."
It took Peyton and the Colts a few years to get things going, and the pesky New England Patriots were a big roadblock. But in 2006, Peyton helped deliver a championship to Indianapolis via the Colts' win against the Chicago Bears in Super Bowl XLI.
And despite the bravado from a young Peyton in 1998, the former Vol made more than a few friends along the way.
