Milt Plum likes evening games. Any earlier, especially if the sun’s shining on Raleigh, N.C., and the former quarterback would just as soon be outside.

The Broncos-Eagles contest Sunday was an evening game for him, kicking off at 4:25 on the East Coast, but Plum was out of the TV market. He settled for what he could get and thought little of it. After all, TV contracts and blackout policies are one of a million outgrowths of the big money that took over pro football after he retired. When people ask Plum, who played in the NFL from 1957-69, what’s different about the game today, his answer is always the same.

“Six zeroes,” he’ll say, laughing.

Cellphones are another sticking point, another change. Start talking about a cellphone in 1960, Plum said, and you’d be off to the mental institution. But it was a cellphone — a call from his lady friend — that clued him in.

Peyton Manning had tied his record. Sixteen touchdown passes, no interceptions, to start the season. Before Sunday, it was just Plum, who accomplished the feat in 1960 with the Cleveland Browns. Now he shares the honor with Manning, one of the greatest quarterbacks of all time.

“Honestly, that’s a record I didn’t know I had,” Plum said Tuesday over the phone from his home in Raleigh.

In fact, he doesn’t think anyone would have even considered it a record when he played.

“Nowadays they’ve got statistics on everything: what time a guy eats, what time he goes to bed, how much milk he drinks per week,” Plum said.

To Plum, it’s amusing. Milt Plum, Peyton Manning — not bad company for a former journeyman quarterback. Even so, what Manning does seems almost foreign to the 78-year-old, who said he can’t imagine throwing the ball as much as Manning does. In his time, Plum said, you threw on third down, and maybe occasionally on first down, just so opponents didn’t always know what was coming. It was run, run, run the rest of the time. The prevailing theory back then was as long as your team had the ball, the other team couldn’t score.

What took Plum 10 games to accomplish has taken Manning four games. Over his streak, Plum averaged 191.7 passing yards and 19.8 attempts per game; Manning’s averages are a whopping 367.5 and 39. These are the most incomparable of accomplishments, separated by 53 years and a game that has rapidly evolved. Plum finished the 1960 season with five interceptions and a 2 percent interception rate. If Manning is able to finish with the same amount of picks as Plum did, and keeps passing at his current rate, his 0.8 percent interception rate would tie Tom Brady in 2010 for the lowest of any quarterback attempting 400 or more passes.

Manning is making history, but he’s hardly destroying Plum’s. This record is some kind of added bonus, a cherry on top of a career he already saw as complete. Plum is quick to point out that the Broncos’ quarterback hasn’t broken his mark just yet. He’s just tied it, Plum said, chuckling, then he sighs, conceding what will almost certainly happen Sunday in Dallas.

“I guess it was nice to have.”

Joan Niesen: jniesen@denverpost.com or twitter.com/joanniesen