Miami » As Indianapolis quarterback Peyton Manning stepped up to the podium to talk to the media at his team hotel last week, you almost had to be disappointed.

Manning wasn't wearing a Saints jersey. His head seemed like it was normal size. He wasn't barking out audibles or doing anything particularly unusual.

You can't believe everything you read. The NFL media machine has spent the week leading up to today's Super Bowl calling Manning a savant, a New Orleans native torn between home and team, and a jabber mouth who's always making calls at the line.

The thing is, there's some truth to it. He's still a human being, but Manning might be the most interesting player on the field at kickoff today at 4:25 p.m.

Much of that has to do with his intelligence. To be sure, Manning is a smart player. Colts coach Jim Caldwell says Manning isn't just physically gifted.

"I'm not certain I have any unusual way of describing it, but there is a term that I've mentioned before, hypermnesia, and he does have [it]. He has the ability to remember almost everything he sees and hears," Caldwell said. "He not only can take that information in, but he can also regurgitate it, and not only that, he can utilize it."

He also applies himself.

The flight from Indianapolis to Miami was just more time for Manning to study game film of the Saints' defense.

"Just because it was a two-and-a-half hour flight," Manning said. "It gave me a chance to kind of study a little bit. It's just what I chose to do, I guess. No movie."

There's no question the work has paid dividends. Manning is a surefire Hall of Famer. He has been voted the NFL MVP a record four times. In 12 seasons, he has thrown for more than 4,000 yards 10 times. He has the single-season quarterback rating record with a 121.1 in 2004.

Unlike traditional quarterbacks, you'll almost never see Manning in a huddle. During Super Bowl week, Manning described -- or gave a dissertation -- on what it's like to run the no-huddle offense.

"It is a little bit of a controlled chaos out there. We are all just trying to get on the same page," Manning said. "We don't huddle so we do make calls at the line of scrimmage. Obviously, if we huddled we probably wouldn't have to do so much at the line of scrimmage. I feel we are at our best when we are not having to make all those calls and we can just get up and run the play that we called."

Colts tight end Dallas Clark has played with Manning for seven years and says all the chatter keeps his teammates on edge. They're not always sure if it's the real deal, either.

"It's pretty much all real," Clark said. "Obviously sometimes it's a decoy. More often than not, it means something. It's a full-time job trying to keep up with all the hand signals and code words. It's fun. It's an exciting part of our offense, just being a part of it and the fact that we can change a lot of different things.

"The play that we call when we come up the line, the defense gets us, it's fun to be able to adjust. You try to have the last say, and the last call. It puts us in a better situation than the defense."

Manning has been adept at putting his offense in a better situation than the defense for 12 seasons. But that's not the only thing that makes him so interesting.

jpatrick@sltrib.com