[Quesadilla Joe]

The Denver Post's biggest Broncos/Manning critic is now on the Manning train.

Mike Klis: Peyton Manning looks ready to shine for Denver Broncos

All right. I'll admit, this Peyton Manning guy might have a chance.

He has looked good in camp. He is throwing the ball much better than I thought a 36-year-old coming off a missed season and four neck surgeries would.

Even the Broncos, who took a risk on Manning several steps back from his encouraging recovery, have to be pleased with the progress he has shown.

"I am pleased but I'm not surprised," said John Elway, the Broncos' football operations boss. "I did not doubt that he wouldn't be able to come back. The confidence came from the medical people and from him. Just knowing the kind of guy he is, we knew he would come back."

Maybe it was all those years covering baseball. Maybe it was a belief that instead of an expiration date, the magic of Tim Tebow with a little more rub and polish was worth clinging to for another year or so. Maybe my contrarian nerves, after all these years, simply can't be suppressed.

Whatever it was, I wasn't as sold as the Broncos were that signing Manning and trading Tebow, who is now with the New York Jets, were the best moves for this town's franchise.

These moves would have never been made in baseball. No ball team would have ever traded a 24-year-old left-hander who throws hard if not always in the strike zone, for a 36-year-old right-handed control pitcher who just missed the entire previous season with a serious injury.

OK, maybe the New York Yankees. Everybody else in the big leagues thinks somewhat about the future.

For the Broncos, the moves smacked of win now — never mind the consequences that might come later. Team owner Pat Bowlen is 68. John Fox is among the NFL's oldest coaches at 57. Elway's age at 52 isn't as relevant as much as he's in a hurry to snap the Broncos' Super Bowl drought.

Oh, and — has it been said? — the new quarterback is 36.

"We'd have done this if Peyton was 25 and John Fox was 45 and I was 40," Elway said. "The ages are what the ages are. The circumstances made this kind of a perfect storm of why he ended up leaving Indianapolis. But when you get an opportunity to go get a guy like that, you do it."

Keep in mind, in the great Peyton Manning vs. Tom Brady debate from 2004-09, I was a Manning guy. I thought he did more with less. The Colts' tumble without him last year proved it.

Manning's past greatness wasn't the issue. Missing an entire season at 35. Four neck surgeries. That's where doubt wrestled against this town's Manningmania.

Manning is one of the greats, but what the Broncos are asking is for him to go where no more mortal has gone.

But after steadily watching Manning from the first OTA on May 20 (when every throw was short and his lone deep ball fluttered) to the second minicamp session June 13 (when he sliced the Broncos' defense in the same manner Aaron Rodgers, Matthew Stafford and Brady torched Denver's D for a combined 15 touchdown passes in four games last year) to his family's passing academy in Louisiana (where he threw with authority while completing 7-of-8 in an eight-pattern passing exhibition) to his first three practices at training camp (where he has continued to throw with strength, accuracy and velocity), my evaluation of this Manning-for-Tebow swap has been modified.

I now think the Broncos have a chance. There are no five-year plans in the NFL, anyway. Furthermore, as Elway the former Yankees' minor-league prospect made me realize, even Hall of Fame pitchers only go every fifth day in baseball.

In football, a quarterback controls every offensive play of every game.

You can't win now in the NFL unless your quarterback is ready now. Manning looks ready.

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