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Peyton Manning Owns the Florida Gators…In the NFL

By Caleb Calhoun

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With the Denver Broncos 24-12 win over the Detroit Lions, former Tennessee Volunteers quarterback Peyton Manning showed he owns Florida Gators in the NFL.

It is a stroke of serious irony.

You would be right to point out that the Florida Gators owned Peyton Manning during his time at Tennessee, going 0-3 in his starts against them from 1995 to 1997.

You’d also be right to point out that this might not be the best time to write this article given that, against all odds, Florida continued its dominance over the Vols with a fourth quarter comeback to win for the 11th straight time in the series 28-27 just this past Saturday.

But on Sunday, Manning went out and revealed a different storyline: he has spent his entire NFL career being a nightmare for anybody ever affiliated with Florida.

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In a night game on the road against the Detroit Lions, Manning went up against Teryl Austin, the Lions’ defensive coordinator. Austin coached a year at Florida in 2010.

And Manning punished Austin for that connection, going 31 of 42, completing more than 70 percent of his passes, for 324 yards and two touchdowns for a quarterback rating of 101.7 and an even more impressive Total QBR of 83.5. The result was a 24-12 Denver Broncos victory.

But this is just one in a long line of instances in which Manning has destroyed anybody connected with Florida in the NFL.

Consider that Manning’s lone Super Bowl win was against the Chicago Bears whose starting quarterback was…Rex Grossman. Grossman was a candidate for Heisman in 2001 as Florida’s quarterback when he set numerous records during Steve Spurrier’s last year there. Despite leading his team to the big game in 2006, Grossman became the butt of many jokes because Manning managed to overwhelm him.

Manning torched the Bears’ defense that game, putting Grossman in a position to be more than a game manager. The result was two interceptions and an embarrassment that he has not lived down since.

On top of that, even before the Super Bowl, Manning led the epic comeback against the New England Patriots in the AFC Championship to secure a 38-34 Colts victory. Guess who were two of Tom Brady’s top targets in that game and throughout that year.

Jabar Gaffney and Reche Caldwell.

Both were Florida receivers.

Meanwhile, throughout his time with the Colts in the AFC South, Manning consistently went up against the Houston Texans, who had an assistant coach on their team named Jon Hoke. Hoke was a defensive assistant at Florida from 1999 to 2001. And then he went to Houston from 2002 to 2008.

Manning’s record against the Texans during that time: 13-1.

But all of this pales in comparison to one fateful decision Manning made coming off of being cut by the Colts in 2012.

With teams across the league courting him, Manning chose the one team that had a Florida graduate as a starting quarterback at the time. And that quarterback, Tim Tebow, is widely considered the greatest Florida Gators football player ever.

He also generated a ton of hype the season before by carrying the Broncos to the Playoffs.

But Manning went to Denver and unseated Tebow, a move that effectively ended Tebow’s career. That’s right. Manning’s decision ended the NFL starting career of the greatest player ever on the Florida Gators.

And that is just another way he has punished Florida in the NFL.

Manning may have been owned by Steve Spurrier and Bob Stoops, and true enough, the one exception to this story is that he lost his lone NFL start against Spurrier in 2002, when the Washington Redskins beat the Colts 26-21.

But outside of that one thorn, or perhaps because of it, everybody ever affiliated with Florida has had hell to pay when coming across Peyton Manning.

And on the heels of the Vols continuing to show that they cannot beat Florida, their best player ever went back out and dominated another Florida-affiliate in the NFL.

So yes, Manning owns Florida in the NFL. And anybody who has ever been with the school should fear him.

Next: Tennessee-Florida Report Card: Grading the Vols

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