Peyton Manning's NFL legacy: He took quarterbacking to a new level

Over his first two seasons as the head coach of the New York Jets, Rex Ryan may have reached his peak at designing defensive schemes that baffled quarterbacks and coordinators alike. Much of it was in the ability to disguise which players were rushing the passer and which were dropping back in coverage.

This was at the height of Darrelle Revis and his island, so Ryan knew an opponent's top receiver was neutralized. He would then have the rest of his guys set up in ways that tricked offenses into using two blockers for a defensive lineman who'd fall 10 yards back while leaving the other side exposed for a blitzing linebacker.

Everything was a confused mess. New York won four playoff games (all on the road) those two seasons, reaching consecutive AFC title games despite trotting out Mark Sanchez at quarterback.

In January 2010, with a trip to the Super Bowl on the line, the Jets visited Indianapolis and quarterback Peyton Manning, who will announce his retirement on Monday. Manning, 39, ends his career as a five-time MVP, two-time Super Bowl champion and owner of records upon records, dating all the way to his days at the University of Tennessee. He's a sure-bet, first ballot Hall of Famer and an icon of the game the past two decades.

Boiling his 293 career NFL games (playoffs included) down into one may be foolish. However, especially with so much recent focus on a two-decade-old training-room incident, it can serve as a reminder of the unique on-field genius of Manning and why he’ll forever be included in the debate over the greatest to ever play the position.

Through much of the first half of that AFC title game, Ryan and the Jets were having his way with Manning. The quarterback couldn't set up the proper blocking schemes to buy the time to complete passes downfield. He'd been sacked twice. The run game was mostly corralled. Drives stalled in the red zone.

Just before the two-minute warning, Manning was 7-of-15 passing for 120 yards and no touchdowns. The Jets led 16-7. Lucas Oil Stadium was restless. Manning looked rattled.

Then, he said later, he lined up on second-and-10 from his own 20-yard line, recognized the defensive formation in front of him and understood where the pieces would go post-snap. He called an audible and promptly hit wideout Austin Collie for 18 yards. On the next snap he threw to Collie for 46, then on the next 16 more and a touchdown to Collie.

Just like that, three passes in a row, and the Colts went into the half trailing by three carrying all the momentum.

"I thought, 'He's got them figured out,'" Peyton's dad, Archie, said of that moment.

He had. Manning completed 18 of his final 24 passes, three of them for touchdowns. The Colts rolled to a 30-17 victory and advanced to the Super Bowl (they'd lose to the New Orleans Saints).

The Jets game was like a prizefight, where one punch changed the trajectory, leaving the other side desperate and grasping once the original strategy was blown up. Even when Ryan abandoned what was successful, nothing new worked. The coach was on his heels. Whatever he called, Manning exploited.

"We tried everything," Ryan said afterward, shaking his head in defeat. "We tried man. We tried two-man zone. We tried you-name-it coverage … we couldn't get off the field. They kept marching it down the field on us."

And what was it that Manning saw on that one play that cracked the code?

It wasn't anything Ryan had shown during the season with the Jets. Manning had watched and rewatched every one of those games during the week. It wasn't anything any other team had tried on the Colts, or anyone else all season, or the season before, or the season before, or even the season before that.

What Manning saw, and recognized, was a set-up from all the way back to the 2005 regular season, a Colts game against the Baltimore Ravens, whose defensive coordinator at the time was none other than Rex Ryan. In a flash, formations from five seasons and one team ago computed into Manning's mind. That was all it took. Ryan thought he'd dug deep enough into history that Manning would never remember. He was wrong.

"I studied the 2005 Colts-Ravens game," Manning said. "You kind of [watch footage of] a game and say, 'They might play some of this defense,' and that's kind of what they did today. [Ryan] has his style of defense and he goes back to things that worked.

"That play down the field to Collie was the play that got us going. From that point on, we had a good bead on things."