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Twenty-five years ago, 25 NFL drafts ago, Peyton Manning was no sure thing to be the No. 1 selection in the 1998 draft.
Never mind he came from the NFL’s version of the Kennedy family, or that he had been wildly productive at the University of Tennessee, or that he had finished a close second in the Heisman Trophy balloting behind Charles Woodson.
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There were questions: Was his arm strong enough? Was he nothing more than a product of the Tennessee system? Was he as athletically gifted as the young man who would become the yin to Manning’s yang, strong-armed Washington State quarterback Ryan Leaf, who was vying with Manning to be picked No. 1 overall?
Manning was viewed as the “safe” pick. A good quarterback with limited upside. Late in the draft process, Colts owner Jim Irsay asked then-team president Bill Polian to give him the pros and cons on Manning.
Polian replied, “If we’re right, he’s got the capacity to lead us to the promised land. And if we’re wrong, the worst we’re going to get is Bernie Kosar.” He then paused: “Which, as we know, is not bad.”
Leaf, whom Sports Illustrated termed “the potential mother lode,” was the boom-or-bust selection. He had the size, the arm talent and had come off a brilliant college run, where he’d led Washington State to the Rose Bowl. Leaf hadn’t accomplished the things Manning had throughout a legendary and prolific college career, but in a world where unique traits are all the rage, Leaf was overflowing with them.
Then-Newsday reporter Bob Glauber polled 20 league general managers prior to the draft. Fourteen said they would take Leaf.
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It seems absurd now, even laughable, the ultimate cold take exposed.
Manning carved out a Hall of Fame career, set almost every passing record imaginable, won two Super Bowls — one with the Colts, one with the Broncos — and stands as one of history’s greatest quarterbacks, a legend by every measure.
Leaf, of course, busted in a sad and incendiary way. After just four years, he was out of the league, his short tenure in San Diego marked by poor play and immaturity. It serves little purpose to delve too deeply into Leaf’s terrible post-draft fall, his mental-health decline, his descent into addiction, all of it culminating in legal troubles and prison stays — including one 32-month stint for breaking into a home in Montana to steal prescription drugs and violating terms of his Texas probation.
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What matters is he’s turned himself and his life around. He has become a prominent member of the sports media (yes, he knows it’s highly ironic given his old animus against the media), a man leading a sober, faith-centric, family-first life that speaks to the power of personal reformation.
But this isn’t about what happened after the draft; that’s another story. Another book, even. This is about what led up to the draft and the draft itself: how a difficult decision became easier as the process wore on, how Manning ended up in Indianapolis and saved the franchise (can you say Los Angeles Colts?), while Leaf went to San Diego and struggled in almost every conceivable way.
It’s been 25 years. Some of the memories are a little fuzzy by now, and there’s some significant disagreement among those involved in the selection on some specific details. Twenty-five years can shape-shift a memory. As the line goes, “Time moves in one direction, memory in another.”
The bottom line, though, remains the same: After a long and challenging process filled with drama and Faustian twists, the Colts made the right move and walked away with a star franchise quarterback. And that’s just about all anybody can agree on after all these years.
Leaf, who has an eidetic memory, recalled draft day 1998 with great clarity and joy. The draft process had been bumpy, but to come from Montana — hardly a football factory — and be selected with the No. 2 pick was a dream come true. It’s not that he didn’t want to go to Indianapolis, as was stated by his former agent, Leigh Steinberg, in his 2014 book, but all things equal, he preferred to stay on the West Coast near his family and live in a city where it’s 75 degrees and sunny virtually every day.
“It was one of the most incredible days of my life,” Leaf, who now lives in Connecticut, told The Athletic. “My parents are visiting right now, and we were talking about that whole draft experience and how great it was. She was telling the story of my 95-year-old grandma; she was 70 at the time, she slides next to Charles Woodson and she says, ‘Charles, now why did you have to intercept Ryan in that Rose Bowl?’ My grandpa was still alive. It’s still one of the greatest days of our lives.”
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But in the many years since that moment, Leaf has found himself fighting misperceptions and, in his mind, blatant untruths borne of revisionist history. That’s happened with greater frequency in recent weeks, as reporters dived into the 25th anniversary of that 1998 draft.
Polian recently took part in a podcast with national football writer and longtime Buffalo hand Vic Carucci, talking at length about the months that led up to the big decision between Leaf and Manning; Leaf was dismayed by what he heard. A lot of it, Leaf insisted, was not true. Not even close.
Polian told Carucci: “(After Leaf’s pro day at Washington State), we had a meeting that didn’t go well at all. Coach (Jim) Mora asked him, ‘When are you planning on coming in after the draft? You can come in a week afterward.’ Ryan said, ‘Coach, I can’t make that. My buddies and I have a trip planned to Las Vegas. We’ve planned this for a long time, so I’ll be in three days or so later than that.’ That obviously wasn’t what you wanted to hear.”
Leaf has been hearing some version of that apocryphal story for years, but he never felt comfortable enough to loudly address the untruth. Until now.
After the podcast and transcript dropped, Leaf took to Twitter:
Well this is just a huge fucking lie. Why Bill Polian continues to spew this bullshit narrative is beyond me. Maybe he thinks it makes the story more compelling. Seems pretty compelling already, greatest QB ever, biggest bust ever. Doesn’t need ur shit editorializing Bill! https://t.co/p9keE2Jsma
— Ryan D Leaf (@RyanDLeaf) April 18, 2023
I reached out to Polian to talk about his primary role in drafting Manning. I also used the opportunity to ask about his podcast and Leaf’s angry response.
“Are you aware that Leaf has been taking issue with your podcast and, specifically, the story about going to Vegas?” I asked Polian.
“No, I didn’t know that,” he said.
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Polian then addressed the issue and sounded quite chastened by the whole thing. If you know Polian, he doesn’t do chastened; it’s not in his DNA. But he sounded generally sorry and willing to concede he just might be wrong.
“It was 25 years ago. I’m 80 years of age; I’m sure I’m misremembering a lot of it,” he said. “I do remember something about a trip to Las Vegas because I thought it was a bit out of the ordinary, but I wouldn’t vouch for any other part of it — and I thought I made that clear on the podcast. I probably shouldn’t have brought it up. In retrospect, I probably shouldn’t have.”
Turned out, Leaf got Polian’s phone number just a few hours earlier and read him the riot act, taking issue with his recollections.
“Yeah, I went to Vegas the night of the draft; that’s where the story came from,” Leaf said. “But the decision wasn’t made until the last minute. If I was getting drafted by Indy, I certainly wasn’t going to Vegas. But since it was San Diego and we were in (owner Alex Spanos’) plane, he had a place in Vegas, he said we could spend the night there, and we flew back the next day in time for the press conference. … This wasn’t relayed to anybody until later when I was a complete bust and there were books to be sold and stories to be told. The truth was, I’d never met Polian or Mora.”
His first conversation with Polian came last week, when Leaf got his number and called.
“I didn’t want to do it in the public eye anymore,” Leaf said. “But look, I was tired of being bullied and belittled. The conversation, though, it went great. He was gracious and humble and said he might have misremembered. And I held my line. My wife was in the car with me, and we walked away feeling good about it, and that’s the way you want the resolution to be. I let him know my feelings, let him know that it’s affected me for a long, long time, and I wasn’t going to allow it to go unaddressed any longer. I was proud of myself, and I was proud of him for taking ownership.”
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He wants the record corrected on another story that’s made the rounds over the years. In 2014, Steinberg wrote in his book that he and Leaf conspired to get the quarterback to his preferred destination, San Diego. Steinberg said it was all part of a plan and was one reason why Leaf failed to show at the Holiday Inn for his 20-minute combine meeting with the Colts.
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Leaf said he was asked by the Bears to take an MRI on his thumb, and he thought medical issues took precedence over interviews. He figured it would just be rescheduled. Instead, the Colts reacted angrily, and the story was front-page fodder.
“I thought it was mock outrage,” Leaf told The Athletic. “I don’t think they ever really wanted to draft me.”
The larger picture, the idea Steinberg and Leaf conspired to tilt the draft, that’s always been news to Leaf.
“I’ll never forget, I was sitting in prison watching (ESPN’s Pardon The Interruption) with (Michael) Wilbon and (Tony) Kornheiser on my little TV at the end of the bed, and they had Leigh talking about how we sabotaged the ’98 draft,” Leaf said. “I was never part of those discussions. My father was never part of those discussions. So, he either fabricated that to sell books, or he was just incorrect. If Irsay and Polian and Mora wanted to draft me, I’d have been more than happy to be a Colt. Sure, West Coast, my family (in Montana), sunshine, (San Diego) was more appealing to me, but that’s not something we ever did or talked about.”
What does Steinberg have to say about that now?
“I’m not answering that question for $20 million,” Steinberg told The Athletic. “I wrote this big book about all my years in the business, and all anybody wanted to talk about was the Peyton and Ryan thing. I have nothing else to add; that was a miserable period for me. The last thing I thought I’d do is create headlines on an old story.”
In a way, Leaf agrees.
“The story of the 25th anniversary should be about the man, the myth, the legend — Peyton — and how they made the right choice. That’s the story here.
“The truth of the matter is I showed up (more than 25 pounds) overweight. I showed up unprepared. That’s the story, me screwing up. I showed up for the biggest job interview of my life completely unprepared and unprofessional. After the Rose Bowl, I hadn’t touched a weight. I bounced around receiving my awards from the season, drinking beers with former quarterbacks, just not taking things seriously. That’s the story. Not some made-up nonsense.”
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NFL executives will all dig deeply into prospects’ backgrounds, but in Leaf’s mind, there are two areas that cannot be fully anticipated. First, how will a player react to having more money, generational money, than he’s ever known in his life? Second, how will he handle failure? Leaf spent four years in the league, but it was after his third game — a 1-for-15 performance with three interceptions against the Chiefs — when it all fell apart.
That’s when, one day later, he loudly berated a member of the media who wanted to ask him some questions. He then withdrew from his teammates. The story had taken a turn, and there was no going back.
“My career was over after three games, basically,” Leaf said. “It was all about how I dealt with the worst football game of my life.”
Today, Steinberg wonders whether Leaf might have had more success had he landed in Indy instead. Polian, he said, would have been tough on Leaf, but also would have run interference for him with the media.
Leaf isn’t buying that.
“I have a hard time believing that,” he said. “The character defects may have taken longer to come out because (the Colts) were more talented and they relied heavily on Marshall (Faulk) and Marvin (Harrison).
“Look at it this way: If I’m in Indy and I set a record for most interceptions (28) as Peyton did, I don’t know that I could have handled that like Peyton did. I would have looked at that as an absolute abject failure, and at that time, I never looked at failure as an opportunity to do it better the next time. I say all the time, ‘No matter where I go, there I am.’ And I was the problem. Until I fixed the problem, nothing was going to change, no matter where I ended up.”
Polian, a Hall of Fame executive, had been through the quarterback search before. In 1986, he signed quarterback Jim Kelly. Then, in Carolina, he selected Penn State’s Kerry Collins with the fifth pick in the 1995 draft. Coming into 1998, he didn’t necessarily know which quarterback he wanted, not yet, but he knew what he wanted.
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“Accuracy, arm strength, the ability to move in the pocket,” Polian told The Athletic. “Most importantly, the ability to read coverage and get the ball out quickly. And I wanted someone who’d played at least 30 games (in college).”
Shortly after arriving in Indianapolis after the woeful 1997 season, Polian polled his scouts. They were pretty much split on Manning and Leaf. It seems crazy in 2023; it was reality in 1998.
“Once we got into the film, we saw a lot of the same things in both guys,” Polian said. “I wasn’t sure about Ryan’s processing speed at first, but the more film I watched, including the Rose Bowl, the more it became evident to me that he had it. When you go over 500 or more throws with Peyton and 300-plus with Ryan, you get a good view of it.
“When it came to physical ability, it was probably 50-50.”
A turning point came at the combine, where players were scheduled to do 20-minute-long interviews with club executives. The night the Colts were to speak with Leaf, the Washington State quarterback didn’t show.
What really happened? Leaf said he had the Bears’ MRI.
Steinberg wrote that it was part of a plan, that Leaf purposely blew off the Colts in an effort to upset Colts management and lead Leaf to San Diego with the second pick. (That’s after initially saying the Colts failed to share when and where the interview would be.)
Polian believed they were ghosted by Leaf, pure and simple.
And Manning, who knew what was going on, just sat back and watched the show.
Manning’s combine interview went a bit differently. He showed up 15 minutes early. He carried a briefcase, in which he held a yellow legal pad.
“Do you mind if I ask you some questions?” Polian recalls Manning asking.
Polian said Manning asked about the structure of the organization, the structure and concepts of the offense, the practice regimen, the expectations of playing right away, among other questions.
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When the 20 minutes were up, Polian looked at his fellow Colts personnel and asked them, “Did we just get interviewed instead of interviewing him?
“It was funny, and it was instructive,” Polian told The Athletic.
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With about three days left before the draft, Manning went to Indianapolis to have the doctors check something that concerned them about his knee. During his time there, Manning stepped into Polian’s office. Manning asked even more questions and pressed the Colts president for an answer on whether he would be the first pick.
When Polian demurred, Manning said, “If you don’t pick me, I’ll kick your ass for the next 15 years.”
Polian was somewhere between impressed and amused: “I thought, ‘Great, OK, I’ll stay out of your way if we don’t pick you.’”
Another moment came about a month before the draft. Manning was having lunch with Irsay in Miami when Manning looked the owner in the eyes and said, “I’ll win for you.”
“People say those words a lot,” Irsay told Zak Keefer of The Athletic. “But if you were there in that moment and you saw those piercing green eyes of his, his body language, I’m not lying when I say it sent a chill down my spine. It did. I wish every owner could have a moment like that in their career.
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“There are moments in your life where things happen that stir your spirit and your soul. This was one of them.”
The deal was all but done after the Colts brass took a trip to Knoxville, Tenn., for a private workout with Manning. Again, they came away impressed with his football ability and acumen, but more, they were blown away by the things they were hearing from people in and around the program.
“It gave us a chance to see him up close and personally gauge his arm strength, which was actually better in person than it looked on tape,” Polian said. “Then, hearing all the Tennessee people talk about what he meant to the program, how much they liked him and respected him. People were coming out of the woodwork to vouch for Peyton.”
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As the months wore on, the Colts could read the tale of the tape. By early April, Polian had his man. Now it was just a matter of running it past Irsay, which didn’t figure to be a problem.
“It had become pretty clear Peyton was the right guy for us,” Polian said. “Nothing wrong with Ryan; we just thought Peyton was more ready to play.”
The safe pick went on to become one of the greatest quarterbacks of this or any generation. The boom-or-bust kid went bust. And worse.
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Manning wanted to weigh 230 pounds at the combine. He’d heard whispers that NFL executives thought he was too slight, that he wouldn’t be durable. Again, seems laughable now; he played in 208 consecutive games before neck surgeries stole the 2011 season.
But compared to Leaf, Manning looked puny.
“I wanted to look cut and strong,” Manning told The Athletic recently. “People said I was too skinny, not big enough. I had gone to the tanning bed before the combine, which helps with the cut. I drank a ton of water that morning and didn’t go to the bathroom until after the weigh-in. And right before the actual weigh-in, I went in the stall in the restroom and repped out a bunch of push-ups and triceps dips on the toilet seat.
“I was grunting the whole time. Other people in the restroom kept asking if I was OK in there.
“Weighed 230 on the dot.”
For all these years, Polian was under the impression Manning would not be in New York for the draft if he wasn’t chosen first. Not true, Manning said. He told his agent, Tom Condon, that he didn’t want any drama, didn’t want to endure another night like the one he experienced at the Heisman ceremony, but it was just a ploy to put pressure on the Colts. But he had every intention to attend. He was, after all, in New York the Friday before the Saturday draft.
“I was there, right?” Manning said, laughing. “So no, I was always going to be there.”
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The day before the draft, Manning finally got his answer. He was on a river cruise around Manhattan with the other finalists, Leaf, Woodson and Curtis Enis, doing a get-to-know-you media junket with the writers. At one point, his agent received a phone call and handed the phone to Manning.
“Are you ready to lead the Colts to a Super Bowl?” Polian asked.
“Yes, sir, I am,” Manning replied.
Manning was overjoyed, and after the cruise, Manning and his family repaired to the 21 Club for dinner.
Who did he see at the restaurant? Leaf, of course.
Awkward?
“I didn’t say anything,” Manning recalled. “But he was there with his agent and the Spanos family, so he probably had assumed at that point that the Colts were taking me. But I didn’t say a word.”
Seems absurd in retrospect, but at the time, Manning, still wounded by the Heisman snub, felt he had to sell himself as the first pick in the draft.
“The knock on me, which I never could understand, was that I didn’t have any upside,” Manning said. “I was 22 years old; I’d just gotten my braces off a few years earlier. I mean, I felt there’s got to be some upside, still some room for maturity and growth. I didn’t think I’d maxed out at 22. So, you read that, and it probably brings out some of the competitive fire in you. The arm strength things — and there was the comparison with Ryan, the big arm, Manning was more of the completion guy, the accuracy guy — you get motivated by that.”
The story is often told about how Polian, after watching tape, told offensive coordinator Tom Moore that Manning’s passes started to wobble around 60 yards. Moore, speaking in his usual understated monotone, replied, “Well, we won’t call any plays over 60 yards.”
After the draft, Manning made it clear to the Colts he wanted to join the team immediately and start preparing. But he was told new draftees couldn’t join their teams until later in the week. He didn’t listen, nor did the Colts.
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After the introductory press conference in Indianapolis, Manning stopped briefly in Knoxville for a Peyton Manning Day, then returned to Indy, where Moore and quarterbacks coach Bruce Arians gave him the playbook.
“By Tuesday, I was in Indianapolis, and Tom and BA (Arians) put me up in a Signature Inn on West 38th Street — it’s probably not there anymore — and they closed the blinds and spent three days teaching me the offense,” Manning said, laughing. “I wasn’t allowed to go outside. I couldn’t call anybody. It was literally, like, quarantined before quarantines. That’s my message to rookies; Hey, this is the first day on the job; I understand you want to celebrate, but this is really when the work starts.”
The work never stopped. He didn’t win the Heisman, but he played in four Super Bowls and won two of them. And he became a first-ballot, no-brainer Hall of Famer.
Manning and Leaf will always be connected by history, but they remain connected even now. During Leaf’s darkest times in prison, Manning would reach out with letters (none of which Leaf chose to read at the time). When Manning was inducted into the Hall of Fame, he invited Leaf to the ceremony, and he attended. Even now, Leaf sends Manning videos of his son making fun of Manning’s bobblehead.
Their careers and lives went in very different directions, but now, they have come full circle.
“To me, one of the stories of 25 years later is, despite how successful Peyton was, how he carried himself, compared to my train wreck of a fall, we’re kind of in the same spot now, right?” Leaf said. “We’re two retired football players who are husbands and dads who do a lot of broadcasting and production.
“Crazy, right? Twenty-five years later, we’re at the same point in our lives.”
(Top photo of Ryan Leaf and Peyton Manning: Jamie Squire / Allsport via Getty Images)