When the nerves were tight, the lead was slim and the game clock was ticking down, Peyton Manning sought out one man on the Colts’ sideline.

“Where’s Freeney?” he’d ask teammates. “Where’s 93?”

Manning, Indianapolis’ franchise quarterback for 13 gilded seasons, knew the blueprint for the NFL’s winningest team of the 2000s. His high-octane offense would build a lead; it was up to the defense to finish it off.

For a decade, Dwight Freeney was the Colts’ closer.

“End this,” Manning would tell him before the defense jogged onto the field. “This is your time.”

Freeney relished it, the stakes and the spotlight, the game’s outcome hinging on his ability to beat the man across from him. Games were mostly a grind, he says: As one of the league’s premier pass rushers, Freeney typically spent the better part of three hours getting held, chipped, punched and double-teamed. But he learned to play chess with the offensive tackle, using dozens of snaps early to set himself up for a precious moment in the fourth quarter when he could pounce.

“In a one-score game, he was Michael Jordan with the ball in his hand and a few seconds left,” says former Colts tight end and longtime teammate Dallas Clark. “We’d all sit on the sideline, knowing exactly what was about to happen.”

Freeney knew, too.

“The best part is when you know the other guy is scared to death,” he says. “He’s not getting any help. He knows exactly what move I’m gonna do, and he knows he can’t stop it.”

That’s when Freeney went to work. Speed. Strength. The swim. The spin. The tackle was left guessing. Hoping. Praying. Inevitably, the quarterback was left on the ground, the down over, the win clinched, the fans in full throat.

Manning would simply grin from the sideline.

Colts owner Jim Irsay says, “I used to love that our best offensive player would find our best defensive player and basically tell him, ‘Free, do your thing, and let’s get the hell out of here.’”

Freeney’s objective never changed.

“My whole football career,” he says, “whoever was blocking me, I wanted to make that dude look absolutely silly.”

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