Peyton Manning has hilarious story about Eli running 6.2 40 in helmet
Peyton Manning taught camp kids an important lesson about speed being overrated by telling them an embarrassing story about his brother Eli Manning being really slow.
By
Will Brinson
•
2 min read
Speed is a big component in today's NFL. The faster your players, the more explosive your offense can be and the more athletic your defense is. There's one spot where speed doesn't always matter: quarterback.
Just ask Broncos quarterback Peyton Manning who, via Jeff Duncan of the New Orleans Times-Picayune, joked at his football camp about being really slow in high school and how brother/Giants quarterback Eli Manning ran a 6.2-second 40-yard dash ... while wearing his helmet.
"When I was a senior being recruited by Tulane at the Tulane Football Camp, we ran 40s and they said that I ran a 4.88 [seconds] that day," Manning said, tongue firmly in cheek. "I'm pretty sure that was [then Tulane coach] Buddy Teevens just doing some good recruiting. I probably ran about a 5.1.
"I remember Eli was a 7th-grader at the camp, the youngest kid at the camp. He's the only guy who ran his 40 wearing his helmet. I don't know why he had his helmet on. I remember he ran a 6.2, [that] was the time that I heard -- a humbling moment for Eli."
That actually sounds more like an SNL skit than anything else, to be honest. A young Eli just bobbling down the field with a helmet and pads, trying desperately to crack seven seconds in the 40.
The larger point Peyton was trying to make is that speed at the quarterback position is vastly overrated. Manning told the kids at his camp he got beat out by an offensive lineman after spending a month doing speed training at a camp.
"Cooper ran about a 4.75, which was great [since] he was playing receiver [at Newman]," Peyton said. "I didn't hear my time, but the guy from St. Martin's, who was an offensive lineman, beat me in the 40, and he ran a 5.8. I don't know what I ran, but it was somewhere after that [time].
"My point was it doesn't matter if you're slow or not strong as an 8th grader or a 9thgrader. Go to work at it. If you can't get real fast [then] jump a lot of rope and get good feet."
And Peyton turned out just fine. Still not real fast, but he's got incredibly quick feet to go with an incredibly quick brain. There are lots of reasons why you want to be fast. Playing quarterback isn't one of them.
