ENGLEWOOD, Colo. — “The perfect time to tell this story is after we win the Super Bowl this year.”

Instead, Peyton Manning was telling it after a training camp practice. Uncertainty visited his career for the first time last season, the faint scar on the back of his neck mapping the detour from the smooth path he had followed since high school, the one that made him the biggest, most surreal free agent in football history earlier this year. He has landed here, in the unfamiliar shadows of mountains he has no time to appreciate, in a new offense whose terminology he is still learning, making jokes about how he feels a little like a rookie but is not allowed to play like one. He does not know what to expect when the Denver Broncos open the season against the Pittsburgh Steelers next Sunday, let alone four months from now.

So Manning wants to tell his Denver story now, the one that — if the Broncos wind up in New Orleans in February as Manning hopes — will wrap his own recovery, and the Broncos’ big bet on it, in a neat bow.

“The first pass I threw in Denver was to Helton,” Manning said of his former college teammate, Colorado Rockies first baseman Todd Helton. Helton had invited Manning to use the Rockies’ facilities during the N.F.L. lockout last year, when Manning was without access to the kind of equipment and guidance he needed after such a serious injury.

Manning was not just frustrated that he had been cut off from the people in Indianapolis who knew his body best. He was also craving privacy. His arm had lost strength, his grip was soft, his triceps had withered after one of his earlier neck operations. It had all left him oddly vulnerable and isolated.