Tom Brady: ‘I Fully Support Peyton’

Peyton Manning’s main rival became a chief supporter in the wake of allegations that the Denver Broncos quarterback used performance-enhancing drugs.

“I fully support Peyton,” New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady told Boston’s WEEI in his weekly radio interview. “My friendship with him over the years, he’s a guy that I can always count on, and has been someone that’s always been so supportive of me.”

An Al Jazeera undercover report recorded a pharmacist claiming that a company he once worked for supplied human-growth hormone to Manning and his wife. The Denver Broncos quarterback confirms that he received treatment from Indiana’s Guyer Institute when he healed from neck issues in 2011. His camp refrained from saying what medical products, if any, his wife received from the group, citing her privacy.

“He’s a big boy,” Brady said in declining to offer Manning advice. “He knows how to handle these things.”

Charlie Sly, the loquacious pharmacist caught talking on a recording about his exploits in supplying drugs to professional athletes, disowns the remarks he made to Al Jazeera’s undercover reporter. Sly says he made up stories to see if the reporter, a British track-and-field athlete, would pilfer information from him in setting up a rival business. The Guyer Institute said Sly did not work for it when Manning received treatment. Al Jazeera says it holds proof that he did. The network also displayed a cache of drugs that they claimed they purchased from Sly.

“Peyton, I would consider him a good friend,” Brady, who went through the Deflategate ordeal for much of the last year, explained to WEEI. “You hate to see your good friends go through anything like that. He’s been a great player for this league, for his teams, for his organizations. He’s been one of the best players to ever play the game. Nobody has more respect for Peyton than I do, and everything that he’s accomplished. There’s always challenging times, but he’s a tough guy.”