In the aftermath of the Super Bowl, Broncos G.M. John Elway said there’s no deadline for Peyton Manning to apprise the team of his plans. On Thursday, Elway conceded that, indeed, a deadline is looming.
“I met Peyton two evenings ago and we sat and chatted for a couple of hours and I think that the thing that’s amazing is we’re only two-and-a-half weeks out from the Super Bowl,” Elway said on NBCSN’s Pro Football Talk. “Obviously everyone wants to know what Peyton is going to do and after 18 years in this league he deserves some time to think about and enjoy the game but also get away for a little and kind of figure out exactly what he wants to do. We’re going to afford him that, I told him we’ll get back together again in another week or 10 days and kind of see where he is and go from there. But he deserves some time to think about what he wants to do.”
“We are coming to the point where his salary is fully guaranteed for the 2016 season,” I then asked. “I assume you expect that you’ll know what he’s doing before the 9th of March?”
“Yeah and we will, and that’s hopefully what we’re going to do,” Elway said. “Until we get there and until we absolutely need that we’re going to give him that time to continue to, obviously when he gets farther away from the game and clears his head a bit, he could kind of see where he wants to go.”
Elway also made it clear that he can’t wait for Manning to make a decision when it comes to negotiating with Brock Osweiler.
“We’ll continue to talk to Brock, because we can’t afford to lose both of them so I think that we’ll kind of see where that goes,” Elway said. “We’re going to work with Brock, work with his representatives and see what can happen. At least work on the outline of a deal until we see where we’re going to go. Because not only are we going to need an answer, but I think Brock’s going to need an answer too of what Peyton wants to do because Brock’s going to want to play. He’s been in the league now for four years and he’s going to want to play. So he’s going to need some answers too.”
If you have questions about the discussions with Osweiler, here’s what Elway had to say about that.
If you have questions about anything else he said, tune in to NBCSportsRadio.com at 7:35 a.m. ET to hear the entire interview.