Eli Manning: Peyton has bad delivery, donned Aints bag

Eli Manning is on record this morning as saying his brother, Indianapolis Colts quarterback Peyton Manning, has a bad delivery.

But that shouldn’t affect the outcome of Sunday’s Super Bowl—since he was referring to Peyton’s jokes.

Peyton told a joke at Tuesday’s media day that he credited to Eli. When asked if he was superstitious, Peyton quipped, “I’m a little ‘stitious’.” When he didn’t get much of a laugh, Peyton admitted it was a bad joke, and credited the joke to Eli.

“I got a lot of laughs when I told that joke a couple of years ago,” Eli Manning told ESPN Radio this morning. “It must be in the delivery.”

Eli Manning also said that his two older brothers—Peyton and Cooper—donned brown paper bags over their heads with the insignia “Aints” written across them when they attended New Orleans Saints home games as teen-agers.
 
“Everybody else was doing it,” Eli Manning said with a smile.

Olivia Manning, the Manning boys’ mom, was not laughing, Eli said, when she saw Peyton and Cooper on television with the bags over their heads.

Peyton’s little brother isn’t the only one telling tales out of school on the Colts’ MVP.

Former Saints and Colts coach Jim Mora this week in an interview with the L.A. Times recalled Peyton loitering around the Saints locker room as a teen, heisting a players’ towel or wrist band if one was laying around.

Manning’s father, Archie, is a former Saints quarterback. The three Manning boys grew up in New Orleans and went to numerous games and practices as their dad later served as the team’s radio commentator.

Mora has an interesting relationship with Peyton Manning, serving as Saints coach during Peyton’s youth, and coaching the Colts during Peyton’s early years in Indianapolis.

“He was like any other kid hanging around an NFL locker room,” Mora said of his early recollections of Peyton Manning. “If he could grab a little towel that Ricky Jackson had with 57 written on it, or a wristband from Bobby Hebert, he’d do it. He was a good-natured kid, it wasn’t like he was stealing helmets or something.”

But Peyton Manning wasn’t like any other kid. Mora could see even as a teenager Manning had a rifle for a right arm and a computer-like processor for a brain.

Mora let the youngster run the Saints offense a time or two while he was still in high school. Mora again let Manning try his hand at running a pro-style offense during his off-seasons at the University of Tennessee.

“Even then,” Mora told the L.A. Times. “He was pretty impressive.”
 
Mora, who coached the Saints to the team’s first-ever winning season in 1987, said he has a soft spot in his heart for both teams in Sunday’s Super Bowl. He wouldn’t tip his hand on who he’d be cheering for, but Mora told the Times he’d be rooting for one team slightly more than the other.