Doyel: Peyton Manning deserves fairy tale finish

Peyton Manning has a torn ligament in his foot, which is great news.

Bear with me.

Six weeks after throwing for 324 yards and two touchdowns at Detroit, his play has gone from great to mediocre to Orwellian to, um, Osweiler-ian – Manning was replaced Sunday against the Kansas City Chiefs by backup Brock Osweiler, and will yield to Osweiler again Sunday against the Chicago Bears — and none of it computes. Manning was too good earlier this season, was too good last season, has been too good for 17 NFL seasons, to hit the wall as hard as he hit it in recent weeks.

Which leads to two alternatives: He’s hurt … or he’s finished.

Anyone want to see Manning finished?

Of course not. Don’t want to see him hurt, either, but those are the only options for what we’ve seen this season, and given the second option — finished — I’ll take hurt any day for Manning. Especially an injury as manageable as the torn plantar fascia in his left foot, an injury that could explain how bad Manning looked Sunday against the Chiefs. If you missed the game and missed the highlights, do yourself a favor: Don’t Google them.

Manning looked like Dan Fouts — and Fouts is 64 years old. Manning hasn’t had the strongest arm in recent years, but Sunday he was trying to pitch the Denver Broncos past a major league NFL defense, and he was throwing high-arcing softballs. The Chiefs, being the NFL defense they are, said thank you very much and intercepted four of his 20 passes before Broncos coach Gary Kubiak threw in the towel on Manning’s day.

This is me saying Manning’s torn plantar fascia — the sheath of ligaments that runs under the foot — is why he couldn’t get anything on his passes. Footwork matters to all quarterbacks, but to few QBs more than a 39-year-old whose arm has thrown more than 10,000 fastballs in college and the NFL. A torn plantar fascia doesn’t merely diminish footwork; it makes it impossible. The pain is absurd, because the nerves at the bottom of the foot are so alive. In good times the plantar fascia is a prime tickling spot, and in bad times — ever had plantar fasciitis? — it’s enough to make you want to quit doing whatever caused it. Had it myself about 10 years ago. Used to run 3 miles a day, seven days a week. Haven’t run since.

I tend to overreact.

Am I overreacting now, to this news — to this life raft — that Manning isn’t finished, just injured? Perhaps. It’s possible Manning is finished, that what happened to him Sunday wasn’t a function of a torn ligament but an exhausted arm, though we won’t know until he gets the rest he needs to let his foot heal.

Meantime, I’ll cling to the life raft that was floated by NFL reporters Monday about his foot injury. We all have our heroes, you know? And Manning’s one of mine.

Has nothing to do with football.

Lots of you were here when Manning was leading the Indianapolis Colts from 1998-2010, but not me. His era in Indianapolis, your era, wasn’t my era. Mine started last year, and it was last season when the Colts went to Denver for the playoffs, and the Star sent me to Denver early to write about Peyton — and I found a guy who has put down roots in that community like he put down here in ours.

The guy’s a hero, I’m saying, and it’s not the yards or touchdowns.

Football gives Manning the platform to do heroic work for the community, but not everybody with an NFL platform does what Manning does for Denver, what he still does for Indianapolis.

Not anybody does what he does.

Seriously, does anybody in the NFL do more consistently high-level community work than Peyton Manning?

If this is me wearing Peyton Manning fanboy glasses, fine. Some people’s heroes throw the ball a long way. My heroes throw their weight behind children’s hospitals, and then they do more. They call kids in hospital rooms and make sure the Peyton Manning Children’s Hospital is doing all it can for them. Also, they raise money for the children of military personnel gunned down in another of their former home states (Tennessee), and they respond to a letter from a woman dying from breast cancer in Greenfield by asking to meet her.

Peyton Manning does that, and he does more, and we don’t hear about most of it. That’s the best part about the guy. The woman from Greenfield? We know about that story only because the woman, Kari Barnett Bollig, was childhood friends with IndyStar reporter Dana Benbow. How many other random acts of kindness by Peyton Manning do we not know about?

Guys like this, they don’t get old. They don’t get finished. They retire on top, when they’re ready, because someone should get the fairy tale.

In this case, someone wears No. 18.

Find Star columnist Gregg Doyel on Twitter at @GreggDoyelStar or at www.facebook.com/gregg.doyel.