Colts agonized over decision to pick Manning over Leaf

MIAMI - Twelve years ago, the Indianapolis Colts had to make one of the most critical decisions in the history of the franchise.

Peyton Manning or Ryan Leaf.

Looks like a no-brainer now. One has become one of the greatest quarterbacks in NFL history and is a win away from leading his team to its second Super Bowl title in 4 years. The other turned out to be one of the biggest busts to ever come down the pike. But 12 years ago, it wasn't so clear-cut.

"We knew we were going to take one of them, and we knew it was going to be a franchise pick," said Jim Mora, who was hired as the team's head coach by general manager Bill Polian 4 months before the 1998 draft. "We knew how important it was to get the pick right. We probably spent more time evaluating those two guys than anybody else I've ever scouted in my career.''

And a week before the draft, they still weren't sure who they were going to take.

"It wasn't like we already had said, 'OK, Peyton's the guy.' We hadn't done it," Mora said. "We still weren't sure which way we were going to go. It was that close.''

Polian and Mora and offensive coordinator Tom Moore had watched every single pass Manning and Leaf had thrown in their college careers. They had worked out both of them multiple times. They had interviewed them. They had talked to people who had coached them and coached against them. They didn't talk to their mail carriers or kindergarten teachers, but they thought about it.

"We wanted to make sure we made the right decision," Mora said. "We investigated every avenue. We talked to high school coaches. We talked to the guy who used to be at Purdue [Joe Tiller] who had been at Wyoming and had tried to recruit Leaf out of high school in Montana. We sent tapes to Bill Walsh of both these guys. We worked them out and interviewed them. It was a long, thorough process, and obviously, we made the right decision."

Not before having some 11th-hour doubts, though. Polian is one of the best judges of football flesh in the game. But less than a week before the draft, he started having some concerns about Manning's arm strength.

Polian wasn't completely convinced that Manning could make certain throws. He asked Mora and Moore to go back and look at Manning's college tapes again. They did. They assured Polian the kid's arm was just fine. A few days later, the Colts selected Manning with the first pick in the draft. The Chargers, who had the second pick, took Leaf.

"I was a little prejudiced because I'd known Peyton forever from having coached the Saints and [his father Archie] having played down there,'' Mora said. "I knew his family. I had known him and had always liked him as a person. I tried not to let any of that enter into my feelings [when evaluating Manning], but it was there.

"One of the things I thought at the time was, if you're going to be the first pick in the draft and you're a quarterback, you're going to have to handle a lot of pressure, attention, criticism. Because you're going to fail some early. And I always felt Peyton was a lot more mature than Ryan Leaf, and was going to be able to handle all those things. He'd be able to handle things better being the No. 1 pick more than Ryan Leaf."

Mora made Manning the No. 1 quarterback on the first day of his first minicamp. Archie's boy threw 28 interceptions as a rookie and the Colts went 3-13. A year later, they went 13-3 and won a division title. The rest, as they say, is history.

Manning has passed for 50,128 regular-season yards, trailing only Brett Favre, Dan Marino and John Elway, with 366 touchdowns, 181 interceptions and a 95.2 passer rating.

"I don't think anybody could have predicted that he was going to turn out to be as good as he's been,'' Mora said. "That would be impossible. But he's stayed healthy, has run the same offense for 12 years, prepares more than any guy I've ever been around. You could tell pretty quick he was going to be a pretty damn good quarterback. We installed him as our starter the week after the draft at our first minicamp and he never looked back."