When you and I see rain, we think shelter. We think umbrella. We think about how we wish it was a sunny summer day.
Peyton Manning thinks, "opportunity."
Even John Fox couldn't keep a straight face when he described what Peyton Manning was doing at the end of the fourth quarter Saturday.
"Wet ball mechanics."
With Denver's Week 3 preseason game on the line late in the fourth quarter, many people noted that Manning, having long since been benched, was wearing his glove and warming up on the sideline. Did the future Hall of Famer plan on going in? In the fourth quarter? Of a preseason game?
"No, he had no intention of going in," Fox said of Manning. Then he laughed, "He was working on his wet ball mechanics."
Rain had started drizzling late in the second half of Denver's narrowly won 27-26 game against the St. Louis Rams, and Manning apparently saw the precipitation as a chance for preparation.
The funniest part of Fox's joke is that it wasn't a joke at all. Peyton Manning really was working on his wet ball mechanics.
"It was raining there at the end," said Manning, without a trace of laughter. "We haven't had much rain in practice."
"I took some snaps with Manny," Manning continued. "That is something you don't take for granted with a new center. We are going to have some weather I'm sure throughout this year, so I was just trying to use the situation to work on something."
That, among many things, is what separates Peyton Manning from the rest of us lowly members of the human race. As Fox said, Manning will take advantage of every opportunity.
And he'll see an opportunity when we see a drizzle.