Peyton might have unwittingly helped Patriots win Super Bowl

Tom Brady and the New England Patriots might have even more Super Bowl titles to their credit if not for Peyton Manning.

The retired future Hall of Fame quarterback, who dealt Brady and Co. three AFC Championship Game defeats, apparently paid back his former rival by accidentally helping Patriots backup Brian Hoyer crack Los Angeles Rams head coach Sean McVay's system before Super Bowl LIII.

As revealed Monday by Albert Breer of The MMQB, Hoyer believed there were similarities between the offenses of McVay and San Francisco 49ers head coach Kyle Shanahan, who coached Hoyer while the pair were with the Cleveland Browns in 2015. McVay worked under Shanahan with the Washington Redskins.

Hoyer's suspicions were confirmed when he watched Manning break down Jared Goff's game for his ESPN+ series "Detail."

It hit him right away - the offense is the same. Looking at the Rams tape confirmed it. Then, he saw an NFL Network interview where Goff and McVay discussed the coach being in the quarterback's ear up until the 15-second play-clock cutoff, which was something Shanahan did with Hoyer. Then, Hoyer went back to Amazon's "All or Nothing" series on the Rams; it was about the 2016 season but had footage of OTAs from McVay's first spring there. Hoyer recognized the language.

While it's impossible to know how much impact Hoyer's discovery had on the Super Bowl result, Bill Belichick and his defense did have an answer to almost everything McVay's offense threw at them during the 13-3 victory.

New England has made eight straight AFC title games since 2011, winning five. Two of the three losses were inflicted by Manning's Denver Broncos, and his Indianapolis Colts also famously beat the Patriots in the 2006 conference final.