After Peyton Manning threw his 500th touchdown pass on Sunday, some wise-cracking teammate made a joke about how long the 38-year-old quarterback has been in the league. Peyton divulged the line, then his plan for retribution.

“But yeah, somebody asked me if for my first [touchdown pass], ‘did we wear leather helmets?’ So, that was a nice free cheap shot there. I wouldn’t start that guy on your fantasy team next week. He’s not going to get a lot of balls next week. I’ll leave him nameless.”

Those are great lines — both the insult and the response. Peyton’s was delivered with wry perfection. He was obviously kidding about the freeze-out, OR WAS HE? As a public service to those with Denver Broncos’ skill players on their fantasy football roster, we try and narrow down the suspects in the case of the Peyton Manning Age Gag.

Julius Thomas has been known as a “jokester,” but he’s still a jokester on a rookie contract. It’s going to pay to stay on Peyton’s good side. Same goes for Demaryius Thomas.

Former Pittsburgh Steelers receiver Emmanuel Sanders, who signed a three-year $15 million deal with Denver in the offseason, was part of an absurd controversy in August after making the fairly benign comment that Peyton Manning was a better leader than Ben Roethlisberger. It wasn’t the most diplomatic thing to say, but rereading the quotes, it was more pro-Peyton than anti-Ben, like saying “Barbara Streisand is a great singer, but she’s no Aretha Franklin.” Given how his last words were taken out of context, we cross Sanders off the suspect list.

The running backs are an interesting group, both because — oh, who are we kidding. It was totally Wes Welker.