KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- Peyton Manning may be in that career decline that is inevitable for any 39-year-old quarterback, but forgive the Kansas City Chiefs if they won't believe it until they see it.
Manning is 13-1, including a couple of playoff wins, against the Chiefs in his career. He has a better career winning percentage against the Chiefs than any team he's faced at least seven times in his career and, of course, he's 6-0 against them since joining the Denver Broncos in 2012.
"We're not going into this game saying 'Oh, man, this is our chance. Peyton is not the same...'" linebacker Derrick Johnson said. "Peyton is the man. Trust me, when we go out there, there's nothing but respect for Peyton Manning and what he has going on. If we're not on our stuff, he can blow our socks off."
The Chiefs have actually defended Manning very well at times over the years but still couldn't get the job done. He has a better career passer rating against 14 other teams than he does against the Chiefs (99.6). That rating is slightly higher than for his career against all teams (97.5) but not by much.
But they've beaten him just once, in the regular season in 2004. Even then, Kansas City needed to score 45 points to get it done.
It doesn't figure to take 45 on Thursday night when the Chiefs meet the Broncos at Arrowhead Stadium (8:25 p.m. ET). But hanging almost half a hundred on the Broncos wouldn't hurt just to be on the safe side.
"We haven't had a lot of success against Peyton Manning," said Johnson, who along with punter Dustin Colquitt is senior among the Chiefs in terms of years played with the team. Still, he was in his final collegiate season at Texas the last time the Chiefs beat Manning.
"Regardless of whether he had a good game or bad game against us when we played, they won. We're trying to change that. We're always pretty optimistic when we play against Peyton. But we always fell short."