Tony Dungy coached Peyton Manning for seven seasons in Indianapolis and gave him wide leeway to call the plays, run the offense and generally act like a coach on the field. But Dungy doesn’t think Manning could ever be a coach on the sideline.
Asked on the Dan Patrick Show whether Manning could be an NFL coach, Dungy said that he couldn’t. According to Dungy, Manning is the “smartest player I’ve ever been around” and would have such high expectations for every player that he wouldn’t be able to manage players who couldn’t match his mental approach to the game.
“No, absolutely not, because he would expect that from everybody, and he doesn’t realize, everybody’s not Peyton Manning,” Dungy said. “Everybody doesn’t work that hard, everybody can’t be at that level all the time. It would frustrate him to death.”
Dungy said Manning would come to him on a Tuesday with dozens of new plays he would want to install in the offense, and Dungy would have to tell Manning to ease off because it wasn’t realistic to think that everyone on the Colts would be able to learn all those new plays by Sunday.
“He’s got 25 things we can run and he knows they’ll be touchdown plays,” Dungy said. “You have to say, ‘Peyton, they are great plays -- they probably would be touchdowns. You could put them in just like that. Everybody can’t. The other 10 guys can’t handle those 25 new plays.’”
Perhaps Manning’s biggest problem as a coach would be that he wouldn’t be able to run an offense that didn’t have Peyton Manning as its quarterback.