For years, the NFL's finest gathered in early February at the outside pool bar at the JW Marriott Ihilani Resort & Spa. The Pacific Ocean surrounding the Hawaiian island of Oahu is unspeakably blue, the sun warms your skin and the palm trees actually sway in the breeze.

Somehow, that just makes the mai tais taste even better.

Ten years ago, Patriots Pro Bowl cornerback Ty Law was sitting out there with some of his buddies -- and a guy named Peyton Manning.

"Peyton's got the tab and he's just feeding us drinks, feeding us drinks," Law remembers. "The season's over. We're not thinking about football, just talking, hanging out. When he walks away for a minute, one of the guys says, 'Who's going to bring up football first?'

"Everybody said Peyton's name."

Sure enough, after a few more rounds, the Colts' quarterback leaned into Law and grilled him about a specific interception earlier in the season.

"What were you thinking?" Manning asked. "What were you reading? How did you know where it was going?"

"Hey," Law said, laughing, "I ain't talking no football. There's no secret sauce, but if there was, I wouldn't tell you."

A decade later, Ty Law is still laughing.

"That's Peyton, a student of the game," Law said last week from his Florida home.

That would make Law, who played 15 NFL seasons, 10 of them with the Patriots, a professor emeritus. No player has more than his nine interceptions against Manning. On Sunday, he'll be lecturing again on Comcast SportsNet New England's pregame and postgame shows for the Patriots-Broncos game.

The Ravens didn't worry about disguising coverages against Peyton Manning in last season's playoffs. Doug Pensinger/Getty Images

It's not surprising to learn that Manning and Tom Brady are both exceedingly fussy guys. They like their receivers on time and in the proper place. They want their teammates reading -- seeing -- the defense the same way they are. If there is a late change on the defensive side, they get exasperated if the receiver doesn't make the appropriate sight adjustment. Instantly.

ESPN Insider Gary Horton worked 10 years as an NFL scout. He has spent a lot of time watching these two players on film. He is struck by the similarities of their games. This has been a tough year for Brady, Horton said, because he's been without so many of his customary weapons.

"Say the route is called to go inside," Horton explained, "and Brady sees the safety overplaying it and anticipates the receiver breaking an out route. But the kid doesn't see it -- and the ball just goes out into space.

"That's what makes Wes Welker so great. If the guy steps inside, he breaks outside. Peyton hits him every time. Now that [tight end Rob] Gronkowski is back, you're starting to see better adjustments by the [New England] offense to the defense."

Leave the tricks at home

It takes a special defense to make Brady and Manning consistently uncomfortable. The Ravens did it in back-to-back games in last season's playoffs. Manning and Brady combined to throw three touchdown passes and three interceptions in the losses that sent Baltimore to the Super Bowl.

"I didn't trick them," Ravens defensive coordinator Dean Pees acknowledged. "We out-executed them. The thing that too many people try to do is to be too coy. It doesn't work.

"We'll take for granted that they know what [defense] we're in. We'll just assume it. You don't want to use a linebacker to cover because he's trying to disguise something. No. Look, you just might as well line up and play what you're going to play."

After winning three Super Bowl rings in his past four years with the Patriots, Law signed with the AFC East-rival New York Jets in 2005. In a late December game, Law stepped in front of Patriots receiver David Givens and went 74 yards with a pick-six, the longest of his career.

"Tom called me the next day," Law said. "That interception bothered the heck out of him. He was like, 'What'd I do? What did you see?'

Ty Law recorded nine career picks against Manning, including three in the 2003 AFC Championship Game. AP Photo/Kevin Terrell

"I told him I had played there for a long time, kind of knew how he operates. On that play, he goes short motion and flashes a look to the other side of the field. Well, I was watching him and he over-exaggerated the short motion and the look, completely oversold it. Usually when he does that they go across the field or run a short out. So I knew he was coming back to me.

"I told him, 'You shouldn't try to do to me what you do to everybody else.' He was like, 'I know, I know.'"

Trent Dilfer, an ESPN analyst with a Super Bowl ring, has spent hours upon hours studying Manning and Brady. He, more than most, knows what they don't like.

"Tom," Dilfer said, "doesn't like inside push pressure. If you can get up in his face and take away his middle-of-the-field dominance, you can succeed. He's not as effective when he's forced to reset his platform. The goal is to make him hold the ball and move laterally.

"With Peyton, it's disrupting his timing. When he's not quite sure what the defense is -- maybe 20 percent of the time -- he has to play after the snap. Good defenses work hard to confuse him a little bit by disrupting the flow of his offense. They get their hands on the tight end and the receivers. The term I've been using is roughhousing."

Horton sees the same thing on film.

"Both of these passing games, if you can be physical with them and rough them up at the line of scrimmage, you can beat them," Horton said. "If I can bump you on the line of scrimmage, I can disrupt the timing by making the receiver late. Hits and sacks come from when the defense gets physical."

Law finished his career with 59 interceptions, including the postseason, but the nine against Manning cost him many hours of film work. For most games, he'd spend an hour after practice watching film. With Manning, he'd go 90 minutes or so and then get the film guys to give him all of the season's "cut-ups" so he could bring them home. After dinner, he'd watch them for another 90 minutes or so, taking notes.

"I admit I had to put in overtime for Peyton," Law said. "You're there after everyone else leaves. You don't want to be the guy in the ESPN highlights. That was always in the back of my mind. You knew what the consequences were if you didn't study. I had a fear of that."