That’s what NBC is calling it, the showdown between the New York Giants and the Indianapolis Colts at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indiana on Sunday, Manning Bowl II. So you have Eli and Peyton, both of whom have won a Super Bowl, both coming into the game with a few question marks and we’ll see if the game can live up to the NBC hype. Here’s what Tony Dungy and Cris Collinsworth told a media conference call this week.
This is two veteran Super Bowl-winning quarterbacks at the top of their game, who happen to be brothers.” – Football Night’s Tony Dungy
BROTHERS PEYTON & ELI FACE OFF IN “MANNING BOWL II” ON “NBC SUNDAY NIGHT FOOTBALL” – COVERAGE BEGINS WITH “FOOTBALL NIGHT IN AMERICA” AT 7 PM ET
“This is two veteran Super Bowl-winning quarterbacks at the top of their game, who happen to be brothers.” – Football Night’s Tony Dungy“My conversation with Archie and Olivia touches on how simultaneously exciting and difficult it is to have their sons compete against each other.” – Football Night’s Bob CostasNEW YORK – Sept. 16, 2010 – Brothers Peyton and Eli Manning will face off for the second time in their NFL careers this Sunday in “Manning Bowl II” when the Indianapolis Colts (0-1) host the New York Giants (1-0) at Lucas Oil Stadium on “NBC Sunday Night Football.”Sunday Night’s game is the first meeting between the Manning brothers since 2006 when the Colts and Giants met in the first-ever “Sunday Night Football” game on NBC, a game that drew 22.6 million viewers and stands as the fourth most-watched game in SNF history. The Colts won, 26-21, at Giants Stadium.Calling “Manning Bowl II” will be six-time Emmy Award-winner Al Michaels (play-by-play), who is in his 25th season as the voice of the NFL’s premier primetime package; 12-time Emmy Award winner Cris Collinsworth, who last year, his first in the SNF booth, won the Emmy for outstanding event analyst; and sideline reporter Andrea Kremer about whom TV Guide said is “one of TV’s best sports correspondents.”Coverage begins with “Football Night in America,” at 7 p.m. ET Sunday with Bob Costas, who won the outstanding studio host Emmy last year, hosting live from inside the stadium. Dan Patrick will co-host “Football Night” from NBC’s 30 Rockefeller Plaza studios joined by Super Bowl-winning head coach and Emmy-nominated Tony Dungy, two-time Super Bowl winner Rodney Harrison, and Sports Illustrated’s Peter King. Alex Flanagan will report from the New Meadowlands Stadium on the Patriots-Jets game.Dungy and Collinsworth participated in a conference call today to preview Sunday Night’s game. Following are highlights:DUNGY ON MANNING BOWL II: “I was there for the first installment of this and I would have to say it was the most hyped regular-season game that I’ve been involved with as a coach. With our team, and I’m sure it was the same way with the Giants, our players wanted to win it because it was a big game, but also for Peyton. They knew this was special. What we had to do was really try and say ‘it’s just a game, it’s still a game, and we’ve got to win it the way we always win games.’ Peyton did a good job of playing it that way and really trying to attack the Giants and not look at it as a personal battle, but you know that part is always there. It might be a little bit of a blessing that the Colts lost last week because now the focus will be, ‘hey, we’ve got to get to 1-1 and we’ve got to win our home opener.’ It may take some of the other things out of it. But you can bet that that part of it is always there. It is going to be a little bit of Manning vs. Manning.”DUNGY ON THE HYPE AROUND THE GAME: “These are two elite quarterbacks now. This isn’t a great quarterback and his little brother. This is two veteran Super Bowl-winning quarterbacks at the top of their game, who happen to be brothers. And that is so unusual it’s always going to be hyped…That’s part of what makes the NFL popular. As a coach, I understood that, and you can’t say ‘Oh, we don’t want the hype,’ because the hype is what makes the game great.”DUNGY ON THE MANNING FAMILY AND THIS GAME: “It’s a difficult thing on all parties involved. Archie and Olivia always go to the games and always thinking your son is going to win, hoping he can win. Now you go to a game knowing one of them is going to lose before you even go. It’s very hard on the family, but they’ll get through it and they know how it is.”DUNGY ON ELI MANNING: “Eli to me, in the last couple of years, has really grown and come on. He’s definitely carrying the team. He’s the face of the Giants now. He is playing very, very good football. He’s playing at a level where you talk about him as a Pro Bowl quarterback. We’re going to do that on our pregame show on Sunday night, compare he and Peyton and what they do well. It is very similar. I think he has stepped up. He’s not where Peyton is yet, but he’s close.”DUNGY ON WHO WILL HAVE THE MOST IMPACT IN THIS GAME: “If you’re looking for people to impact this game it will be the Giants defensive linemen. It’s going to be a passing game and they’ve got to put pressure on Peyton. For Jason Pierre-Paul, it’s a great surface for him. He’s a speed rusher. You’ve got to get there quick and he could be a factor. If the other guys can pressure Peyton without blitzing they’ve got a chance to slow him down. On the other side of the ball, I think it’s going to be some of the interior defensive linemen for the Colts. Dan Muir and Antonio Johnson are going to have to step up because they are going to get attacked. Bradshaw and Jacobs are going to try to find out if that run defense is fixed and those guys are going to have to make some plays.”DUNGY ON THE COLTS COMING OFF OF THE TEXANS GAME: “There are some little things to be fixed but the Colts are focusing on their total game, not just their run defense.”DUNGY ON THE BALANCING THE COLTS RUN AND PASSING GAME: “They look at the way the defense is playing and if you stack the box and put eight or nine guys up there they’re going to throw. If you play the safeties deep and invite them to run, they’re going to run. They really don’t care how they have to move the ball. It’s not the type of thing where they say ‘we’ve got to run X number of times.’ In the whole time I was there they never worried about numbers of how much was run and how much was passed.”COLLINSWORTH ON THE TEXANS OFFENSE AGAINST THE COLTS: “It was about as brutal a beating as I’ve seen with a defense like the Colts, a Super Bowl caliber defense. Houston just absolutely took it to them. It was no fluke the way they ran the football that day.”COLLINSWORTH ON WHO HE’S LOOKING OUT FOR IN THIS GAME: “The guy that I am really looking to see if he can break out with the Giants in this game is Jason Pierre-Paul, the draft pick. For the Colts offensively, Pierre Garcon had a bit of a tough day the other day. He had some drops that could have been touchdowns and then came back and made spectacular plays. Whether or not he’s going to be able to get back to where he was, he was so dynamic a season ago. Then I think the hat’s on Charlie Johnson the left tackle. They helped him a lot in the game the other day. With all the pass rushers the Giants can throw at him, I’m not sure he’s going to be able to get as much help this week.COLLINSWORTH ON PEYTON GETTING HIT A LOT AGAINST HOUSTON: “Peyton got hit. He got hit probably 10 times and a couple of sacks in the game the other day and that’s unusual for Peyton Manning, he usually doesn’t get hit that much.”COLLINSWORTH ON THE COLTS DEFENSE AGAINST THE TEXANS:“They got moved. It was a physical beating, I don’t mean to embarrass anybody, but it was that impressive on the offensive side by the Texans”COLLINSWORTH ON THE COLTS RUNNING GAME: “It’s difficult when you have arguably the best player in football throwing the ball, to turn around and hand it off to somebody.”COLLINSWORTH ON THE COLTS OFFENSIVE LINE: “Peyton is unbelievable at reading things, and getting the ball out of his hands, and not taking sacks. With the offensive line, this is a group that has spent very little time on the field together practicing in game like conditions. It’s always easier to run the football if you are an offensive lineman than it is to drop back when you haven’t worked together that much.”DUNGY ON MICHAEL VICK STARTING: “We saw the true Michael Vick (last week). Last year, I don’t think he was ready physically to do that. He probably wasn’t ready in terms of knowing their offense and all the work that had to be put in. Now he’s at that point where he felt anytime this year if they put him in he could go out and play winning football. I know he feels good about that. He’ll probably get an opportunity to show what he can do with a whole week’s preparation, a whole game in the lineup and I’m looking forward to seeing him.”COLLINSWORTH ON VINCENT JACKSON POSSIBLY GOING TO MINNESOTA: “That’s the kind of player that Brett loves to have on the team. That’s exactly the kind of player; that big catching radius kind of guy that Vincent Jackson is. If I were the Minnesota Vikings it really wouldn’t matter to me what I gave up. We see baseball teams coming down the stretch, they give up their top prospects because they have a chance to win the World Series, and that’s the way I would be too. Minnesota Vikings in their history have never won a Super Bowl, and if I’ve got Brett Favre for one more year, I’m going for everything this year.”COLLINSWORTH ON BRETT FAVRE AND HIS RECEIVERS: “One of the things Brett loves to do is he loves throwing those back shoulders, those high balls, those one-on-one jump balls, ‘the guy is covered, but I’m throwing it anyway’ kind of throws. You could tell he just was not comfortable with what his receivers were doing. He did not have that Sidney Rice kind of feeling with any of these guys. Maybe Visanthe Shiancoe a little bit. I thought he had some confidence in him.”DUNGY ON FAVRE AND HIS RECEIVERS: “I don’t think he is comfortable with any of those receivers now that Rice is out. That’s probably why they wanted to take a look at Javon Walker. He was a big guy that Farve was comfortable with, and it makes a lot of sense to pursue Jackson if they can.”BOB COSTAS INTERVIEWS THE MANNINGS: Bob Costas interviewed Peyton and Eli’s parents, Archie and Olivia Manning, for segments that will air tomorrow on the TODAY show and Sunday Night during “Football Night in America.”Costas: “The Mannings are a unique football family. My conversation with Archie and Olivia touches on how simultaneously exciting and difficult it is to have their sons compete against each other – as they will on Sunday night.”
And that will do it for the NFL previews tonight.
