Deciphering Peyton Manning’s audible calls is about as much fun as watching his games themselves. It’s even more fun when he appears to say something like “fatman” as one of his audible calls.
During the second quarter of the AFC Championship Game in Denver on Sunday, Manning changed a play on third down from the Patriots 38 that went for 28 yards down to the 11. The play turned out to be a running call to Knowshon Moreno — an inside handoff that he took outside.
You probably noticed that in the call, Manning mentioned “Montana.” Then he said something like “fatman” or “batman” and “Omaha” before saying “set hut” and getting the snap.
I’m going to try breaking the play down piece by piece to figure it out.
First off, Ron Jaworski has said that Peyton Manning will have a number of play calls that are coded to a keyword system. Jaws says that Peyton will code the plays to different legendary quarterbacks. So, it’s quite possible that the “Montana” call is named after Joe Montana that corresponds to an inside handoff from the shotgun, which has been one of Manning’s staples since he was with the Indianapolis Colts. I’m not sure whether he said “Batman” or “Fatman,” and I’m not sure if either call even means something. It’s quite possible that “Batman” could refer to one of the Broncos players — like a nickname for Knowshon Moreno — or if he said “fatman,” that could be some sort of code for what kind of blocking he wanted.
One thing we know for certain is that for the first half of the game, “Omaha” meant Peyton wanted the snap right after he said “set hut,” because that’s what kept happening.
Video via Next Impulse Sports
