If Peyton Manning has his way, this won't be his last Super Bowl.
The record-setting Broncos quarterback said Sunday he is not thinking about retirement whether the Broncos win Super Bowl XLVIII next Sunday at MetLife Stadium or fall to the Seahawks.
"If I can't produce, if I can't help the team, that's when I'll stop playing," Manning said. "If that's next year, maybe it is, but I certainly want to continue to keep playing."
Manning and the Broncos arrived in New Jersey on Sunday to begin their week of preparations for the Super Bowl.
Coming off a monster season in which he set NFL records with 5,447 passing yards and 55 touchdown passes, Manning guided the Broncos to the No. 1 seed in the AFC and the top-ranked offense in football.
Now, Manning is chasing the second Super Bowl ring of his career and the first since he joined the Broncos in 2012. Manning signed with Denver after undergoing four neck surgeries that cost him the 2011 season while he was still a member of the Colts.
Manning, 37, said those neck surgeries have made him take each season one at a time and forced him not to look too far into the future.
"I still enjoy playing football," Manning said. "I feel a little better than I thought I would at this point coming off that surgery, and I still enjoy the preparation part of it, the important part of it. Everybody enjoys the games, and everybody's going to be excited to play in the Super Bowl. But I think when you still enjoy the preparation, I think you probably still ought to be doing that."
Manning referenced players who have retired after a Super Bowl such as ex-Giant Michael Strahan, Ray Lewis, who called it a career after the Ravens won it all last year, and his boss, John Elway, who retired in 1999 after winning two straight Super Bowls with the Broncos.
"In talking to Ray Lewis and in talking with John Elway, they couldn't play anymore," Manning said. "That was all they had to give, and they truly left it all out there. I certainly had a career change two years ago with my injury and changing teams, so I truly have been kind of on a one-year-at-a-time basis. So, I really have no plans beyond this game. I had no plans coming into this season beyond this year.
"I think that's the healthy way to approach your career at this stage."
It has been a long, winding trip to get here for the Broncos. Many of them pointed to their playoff loss a year ago to the Ravens as a starting point. That double-overtime loss in the divisional round motivated the returning players, who all pointed to this week at MetLife Stadium as their goal.
"There was definitely a different sense of urgency going into OTAs and starting our offseason training," Broncos cornerback Champ Bailey said. "You could tell that everyone was a little more focused than the year before, and that's really what you want. You want everyone on the same page from Day One. Here is our finished product. We're in the Super Bowl because guys honed in on what they had to do."
The Broncos have a week of distractions to avoid before they take the field Sunday to face the Seahawks.
"At the end of the day, each one of these games gets bigger," coach John Fox said. "Once you get into the playoffs and you get to what we call the second season they get bigger every week and this is the biggest of the biggest. We call it noise. You've got to be able to drown that out and still focus on your job and your preparation. I think our guys have done an outstanding job."
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