Peyton Manning was asked what advice he had for Bo Nix – one Hall of Fame Denver Broncos quarterback to one rookie Denver Broncos quarterback. But Manning’s answer sounded more like advice to Broncos coach Sean Payton.
“Experience is still your best teacher,” Manning said on Wednesday night. “And there’s lots of philosophies and debates on whether you sit a rookie or play them right away. Obviously, Patrick Mahomes sat for a year and then he’s been to, I think, an AFC championship every year since. If he would have played as a rookie, I still think he would have had the same success.
“I played as a rookie. That was not a fun year. It’s well-documented how many interceptions that I threw. If any one of these rookies want to break my record, I would be all for it. I don’t want Bo to break it, but I’d like to get that off my resume. You think with 17 games, they’d be able to do it. Twenty-eight shouldn’t be that hard.
“They’re going to play the best quarterback. But there’s no question, I think any quarterback would tell you, being out there on the field, you just learn more things than you do sitting on the sideline. Any quarterback will tell you that, so when that happens for Bo, these quarterbacks, obviously, Sean will make that decision. But I do think experience is your best teacher. It’s a marathon. It’s not a sprint. I went 3-13 my rookie year and didn’t play very well. We went 13-3 the next year. There’s no way that would have happened had I not played and kind of gone through those struggles and thrown those interceptions and figured out, ‘Hey, I can’t do that anymore. Hey, these guys are faster.’ You just sort of file it all away. Eli (Manning) played, I think, six games his rookie year, and he said what he learned in the six he played was night and day to the 10 that he sat.
