Indianapolis grieving impending departure of Peyton Manning

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When Peyton Manning wanted to talk after the season, he reached out to Bob Kravitz, a highly respected sports columnist for the Indianapolis Star.

It was to Kravitz last week that Manning said, in referring to the Colts practice complex: ‘I’m not in a very good place for healing, let’s say that. It’s not a real good environment down there right now, to say the least. Everybody’s walking around on eggshells. I don’t recognize our building right now. There’s such complete and total change.’

Kravitz believes Manning’s 14-year run in Indianapolis is at an end, and that the city is slowly coming to grips with that.

‘I think we’re going through the five stages of grief here just as we did when we heard Peyton was going to be out for the season,’ he said. ‘For the longest time, people were in total denial. Now there’s some anger, people saying the media’s trying to run Peyton Manning out of town, and we’re slowly moving into acceptance.

‘Financially, bringing back Peyton Manning doesn’t make any sense. Competitively, it doesn’t make any sense. The Peyton Manning era is done in Indy, and the only thing you root for is, is he going to be healthy enough to play somewhere else? Although there are going to be a lot of people who’d much rather see him retire than go somewhere else.’

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-- Sam Farmer, in Indianapolis