What if: Peyton Manning enters NFL Draft in 97 instead of 98?

Someone put a thread about the Colts drafting Ryan Leaf recently, and it got me thinking about Peyton Manning. He thought about coming out after the 96 season and entering the 97 Draft, but he decided to go back to Tennessee. What if Peyton decided to forego his senior year?
 
The first quarterback selected in the draft was by the 49ers with the 26th pick overall. I'd assume that someone else would pick him up before San Francisco, but just imagine it...Montana-->Young-->Manning!
 
Last edited:
University of Tennessee football POD?

This is something I never thought I'd see. :D I was an undergraduate at U.T. in this time period, and maybe can offer an insight or two...

Manning succeeded former standout quarterback Heath Schuler in the 1994 season as a true freshman, after an injury to senior Jerry Colquit in the season opener vs. UCLA and a later injury to current Colorado Rockies first baseman Todd Helton. Schuler had chosen to forego his senior season at U.T. to enter the NFL draft, in which he was the third overall pick, going to the Washington Redskins. His NFL career was nasty, brutish and short, though he would go on to a successful career in real estate and eventually be elected to the United States Congress (D-NC, 11th district). Schuler's controversial foregoing of his senior season, and subsequent bust in the pros, was still very much a topic of conversation at the end of the 1996-97 football season in Knoxville, when Manning was set to make his decision, and surely played no small part in Manning's reasoning.

That being said, the concensus among the student body was that Manning would leave early. At the afternoon press conference when he announched that he was actually going to -stay- (which I watched with two dozen other chemical engineering students on an ancient television, class having been forgotten), the campus erupted in mass, stunned euphoria. Unforgettable...

Largely for this decision, Peyton Manning is a minor god in east Tennessee to this day, with a street named after him on the campus of the University. Even with the Houston Oilers relocating to Nasheville, Manning's colts have a bigger following in the eastern part of the state. If he -had- left early, much of this adolation wouldn't exist... just ask Heath Schuler...
 
Manning

In the 97 Draft, the Jets had the #1 pick, but they traded it to the Rams, who took Orlando Pace. If Peyton came out, they probably would have kept it and selected him. Him and Parcells would have made an interesting pair. He probably would have rode the bench some behind Neil O'Donnell early on that year before taking over and leading the Jets to the playoffs. In 98, they probably would have traded or cut O'Donnell, and then Peyton would have led them to the AFC Championship game, where they would have lost to Denver. In 99, the Jets win the SB over the Rams, and Parcells decides to stay on. Belichick still goes to New England, but isn't as successful with Parcells and Peyton's teams in his way every year.
 
Top