Sports Illustrated NFL writer Peter King made an appearance on the Dale & Holley show Friday to talk about Sunday’s Patriots-Colts game and other league news. Following is a transcript. Listen to the interview at the Dale & Holley audio on demand page.

Wouldn’t you like to head to Indianapolis for this game rather than being in a studio in New York?

You know what is funny about this game, when you think about it, it is one of the games of the year and everybody’s excited about it, [but] other than home field, it has not meant all that much to the Patriots over the years. When you consider when they won in Pittsburgh and, you know, how they won some big road games in the playoffs, obviously. When you think about it, what is really riding on this game other than people like to see [Peyton] Manning and [Tom] Brady go head-to-head? Both teams are going to make the playoffs, both teams, barring something really surprising, are going to win their division. One of the things that is riding on it is that the loser probably has a decent chance of playing in that first playoff weekend. Especially if it is the Patriots losing a third game. Both these teams are going to be playing in January. What would be so much better is if there was some type of sudden-death thing riding on it.

You spent a lot of time talking to people who know Peyton Manning for your recent Sports Illustrated article. What is the most interesting thing you got out of it?

One is that I really wanted to find out how varied Manning can be at the line of scrimmage and how different he can do things at the line of scrimmage. The stories I heard, I must have heard six or seven of them, from Brandon Stokley, Qadry Ismail, Dallas Clark, and he is not the only one who does this, but the way he makes stuff up at the line of scrimmage. His 49th touchdown pass when he broke the record, he threw it to Brandon Stokley and Stokley told me this long story about how, quite literally, this whole play was invented with the 40-second clock ticking down. He told him what to do in the huddle because he saw the corner doing something. How fitting is that? He invented that play, in essence, in the huddle, on the clock. And that was the play that, until Brady broke it, was the all-time record in terms of touchdown passes.

The other thing that I thought was really interesting is that the people in New England don’t really know who Austin Collie is yet. But I think Austin Collie is going to be a very big player in this rivalry for years. One of the reasons is that he walked in as a rookie and already, midway through the season, he has had more success as a rookie than Reggie Wayne, Dallas Clark and Anthony Gonzalez had their entire rookie years. The reason is that he is a cerebral guy that can think along with Manning. I explained in the story that there is nothing like a 12-yard out to the Colts. Just trying to think along with Manning, and what is amazing to me just a couple months after they met for the first time, Collie is able to think along with Manning that he thinks of him as an interchangeable part with Dallas Clark and Reggie Wayne.

Brady does not think he is that good unless he works really hard to be so. Is Manning like that?

Manning and Brady are both sickos like that, I’m convinced. ‘Cause, I told this story in there, Donald Brown from UConn was drafted by the Colts and he goes in there and everybody is celebrating, hey, first-round draft pick and everything, and he gets this text in the afternoon. The text says “meet me at the facility tomorrow at 8 o’clock, warmed up, ready to go.” The reason he does things like this is the same reason that Brady was in the fieldhouse with Joey Galloway, Wes Welker and Randy Moss day after day after day, hour after hour, April, May, early June. In Brady’s opinion and also Manning’s opinion, when we go out to the field for the first game of the season we have to be ahead of everybody else. We can’t be even with everybody else. We have to be ahead. I think that drives Manning relentlessly. To listen to some of the stories that Tony Dungy told me that didn’t make the story that he never is off. He always is thinking. I tell a story about how Qadry Ismail flying down in 2002 for the first game of his Colts career. On Saturday the hay is in the barn, everything is done, it is time to relax. Just get off your feet and take it easy. And he says that Manning comes by and is talking about all the signals he is changing for the next game. It just never ends. I think  those guys have that in common.

Who wins this game?

I like the Patriots. I like them because I think that, in essence, once the game gets kicked off, Brady and Manning are going to make a lot of plays. Not just some, but a lot. They are going to make a lot of plays, in my opinion, I think Manning is going to be a ball possession guy. Rodney Harrison told me something interesting the other day, the way Manning has changed over the years is that he is fine with having the 4-yard dump to a back or to Clark or taking the short curl. He is fine taking the plays without going downfield. If that is how he is going to move the chains, that is the way he is going to move the chains. Whereas Brady, in my opinion, has the chance to go downfield a little bit more because he is going against two rookie corners, one of whom is a free agent. It depends what you consider free safeties and corners. There was something like 27 pure corners taken in this year’s draft, and the guy who started last week and will presumably start this week, [Jacob] Lacey from Oklahoma State, was not on of those guys. He was not one of those guys thought to be draftable this year. So, he is going to be starting against Tom Brady and probably have some obligation against Randy Moss this weekend. So, I think that if you look at the matchups … Plus, you know what I like? I like the fact that the Patriots have a lot of experience playing [Dwight] Freeney and [Robert] Mathis. Sebastian Vollmer is a rookie, but I have watched him a lot the past few weeks and I think he is going to play well. I don’t think he is going to be intimidated. In other words, I think the Patriots rookies are going to acquit themselves a little bit better than the Colts rookies.

Did Josh McDaniels know what he had in Jay Cutler in Denver?

You know what he knew? He knew he had a little bit of a cowboy. He didn’t want a cowboy. We have talked about this before. Josh McDaniels’ decision was an awful lot like Bill Belichick’s decision at the end of the 2001 season when Drew Bledsoe was healthy and thought he was going to get his job back. Belichick, Charlie Weis, the brain trust looked at themselves and said we’ve got a guy in Brady who executes the game plan to a T. He doesn’t go up and audible to something that we probably don’t like. That’s why I think they went with Brady and I think in the end, Jay Cutler to Josh McDaniels was a little bit like Drew Bledsoe. A guy he could definitely win with, but he wanted a manager, not a cowboy.

Is anybody going to take a chance on Larry Johnson? Are things worse behind the scenes in Kansas City?

Only that he was not a beloved guy in his locker room. He was pretty much a loner and he sold Todd Haley and Scott Pioli a bill of goods in the spring when they had to determine whether he was going to stay or go. Are there stories beneath the surface that we don’t know about? There probably are. I mean, this is a guy who has been suspended three times. This is a guy who has been cited, arrested, whatever, for domestic abuse, not spousal abuse, but abuse of women four times in his Chiefs career. A guy who is free and easy with the expletives regarding homosexuals. I still think that he is going to sign with somebody this year and he will go in and be angelic. His career, his future depends on it. Somebody is going to get a running back injury, cause it always happens, they’ll bring him in for six weeks and we’ll see.

The Cleveland Browns are a mess. It sounds more and more like Eric Mangini can’t stay.

I think the way it is going to go is that Randy Lerner, the owner of the Browns, is going to bring in a football czar type. He will bring in a football czar type, his dream guy would be Mike Holmgren, and whoever comes in before the end of the year is going to analyze the situation and report to Lerner on what he thinks they should do. To me, what he is doing is that he is hiring a guy who I would be very surprised if he didn’t recommend a coaching change. That probably means that Eric Mangini is one and done in Cleveland. Then the new coach will probably come in and, I don’t know, pick a guy, Colt McCoy, [Sam] Bradford, [Jimmy] Clausen, whoever. One of the bright young quarterbacks, whoever chooses to enter the draft. The Browns will pick one of those guys high and Derek Anderson and Brady Quinn will move on.

Does Randy Lerner have the Oakland Raiders/Washington Redskins flu, where he is part of the problem?

Well, he doesn’t want to be part of the problem, I guarantee you he doesn’t to be part of the problem. I have spent time with Lerner and he doesn’t want to micromanage this team at all. He has got other interests in life. He is basically the owner and, in essence, the general manager of this Aston Villa team in the British soccer league. All he wants to do is hire a guy to do this job and so that is what his goal is here.

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