The Toughest Job In Sports

Then fate entered the picture in the fall of 1991. The Falcons were fed up with Favre, who was spending most of his rookie year partying. Klingler was enjoying a senior season in which he would throw 29 touchdown passes, and the Packers eyed him covetously. But on Nov. 20, with Green Bay in the midst of a 4-12 season, Braatz was fired. Wolf was hired shortly thereafter, and on Dec. 3 he met the Packers' board of directors for the first time. He faced a firing line of questions about the future of the team, including his opinion about incumbent quarterback Don Majkowski. "Our quarterback of the future is named Brett Favre," Wolf told the group. "We'll trade for him this off-season no matter what it takes." When Wolf hired Holmgren as the Packers' coach the following month, Holmgren readily agreed. On Feb. 10, 1992, Green Bay acquired Favre from the Falcons for a first-round pick in that year's draft.

Fate. Last season Favre became the first player to win three consecutive league MVPs. The Falcons used the Favre draft pick on a running back named Tony Smith, who was out of the NFL after three forgettable seasons. As for Klingler, who was taken by the Bengals with the sixth pick in '92, he has thrown 16 touchdown passes and 22 interceptions in six seasons with the Bengals and the Raiders. Still on the move, he signed in July with, of all clubs, the Packers and is trying to win a job as Favre's backup.

On one hot morning in June, Manning looked up from his breakfast, through eyes that didn't have one bloodshot line even though he had been studying the Colts' playbook, which is as thick as the Manhattan Yellow Pages. "A lot of quarterbacks get picked high, get thrown to the wolves early and never overcome it," he said. "My goals are to never make the same mistake twice and to work. Michael Jordan says you have to work harder in the pros than in college. I will." And the pressure? Manning says he doesn't think it will phase him. "Chuck Noll said pressure is something you feel only when you don't know what you're doing. I'll know."

At a Colts minicamp practice, Manning threw incomplete to a back who was wide open on a flare pattern. He slapped his hands angrily. When the coaches graded the practice, that misfire was Manning's only physical error. Afterward he asked Arians to work with him on the pattern. They ran the play 35 times. "I am coaching a piranha," Arians says. "He eats everything you give him, and then he wants more."

The quarterbacks coach recounted a call he had received a few weeks earlier from his star pupil. While studying film at home in New Orleans, Manning had already watched the tendencies of the Colts' first opponent, the Dolphins. Now he was working on the Patriots, who showed several zone-blitz looks. "On this one," Manning said, describing what he was seeing to Arians, "should I slide right and make the sight adjustment to the left? And who's the hot receiver?" Arians was amazed. This was stuff the Colts would install four days before the game. Manning wanted the answer now.

"The great ones have spontaneity, intuitiveness, inventiveness," says Walsh. "They're intelligent. They know they need to know everything. Peyton Manning could be that player. He's further along than any college quarterback I've seen in years. Maybe ever."

Recently all of this optimism was relayed to Jimmy Johnson, whose Dolphins will oppose Manning in his NFL debut. Johnson has heard it all before, about David Klingler, Rick Mirer and Heath Shuler and all the other saviors who preceded Manning. "We'll welcome him to the NFL," Johnson said. "I imagine he'll see a few things he hasn't seen before."

In the 1990s, that's usually how it all starts to unravel.