Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers has his favorites, and Peyton Manning is at the top of the list.

Rodgers was a guest on Bill Simmons’ HBO show “Any Given Wednesday” recently and was asked for his top quarterbacks — the players he watched and admired in the league.

“I like watching Peyton,” Rodgers told Simmons. “Peyton, I think, did a lot for the pre-snap for everybody.”

When Simmons brought up Manning’s signature “Omaha” play call, Rodgers explained why the call, and Manning, were so effective: Related Articles September 21, 2020 Kiszla vs. O’Halloran: Would Colin Kaepernick be better Broncos quarterback than Jeff Driskel?

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“That was important. I think that’s really interesting. The root of that is a timing mechanism where his offense can get off at the same time. And then the beauty and the brilliance of it is that it goes from that, that word, to you saw numerous times he would change it. He would have a code word that would mean it wasn’t coming on the “Omaha.” It wasn’t “Omaha, Omaha, set hut.” That was a dummy.

“He doesn’t take the chances that we do in Green Bay when we draw somebody offsides, but his ability to manipulate that — their thing was if a guy jumped offsides, the offensive lineman would move an initiate contact or just move to where you get the neutral zone infraction, where we want to snap it and take a shot down the field.

“But the stuff he does pre-snap and his ability to — the thing I love about Peyton, for years, especially in Indy, is they would stay in a 2-by-2 set in any personnel group. Marvin (Harrison) would play one side, and Reggie (Wayne) would play the other side, and they’d have the two tight ends or the third receiver in the slot and be able to run their entire offense out of that and not have motion or dilute it down by trying to be an offensive guru and create some incredible play. It was just, ‘Our offense in 2-by-2 is going to be better than you can do. We’re going to go at a tempo where you just can’t match it.’ There’s a lot to be said of that, and I’ve always tried to get in the minds in the decision-makers at Green Bay is that the simplest stuff is often the stuff that works best, and I always appreciated that about Peyton.”