Peyton Manning helping two of his former offensive coordinators in tutoring Ryan Tannehill

Peyton Manning is retired, but he isn't staying away from football completely.

According to the Miami Herald, the former Colts and Broncos quarterback made the trip to the Miami Dolphins' facility earlier this offseason to help mentor Dolphins quarterback Ryan Tannehill.  It was Manning's idea, as Miami's new head coach, Adam Gase, was Manning's offensive coordinator in Denver.  Before Tannehill was able to meet with the new coaches to go over Gase's playbook, he met with Manning to bounce some questions off of the future Hall of Famer about Gase's system.

"It was really cool," Tannehill told the Miami Herald.  "A guy that had his career, the living legend he is, coming off a Super Bowl winning season - it was really cool just to be able to sit and pick his brain about things he's done in this offense and football things in general: snap counts, things you like, the way you want guys to run routes, little details about the game.  We really just got to talk the game, which is something we both love."

To be honest, it doesn't sound like a bad opportunity for Manning and some younger quarterbacks in the NFL.  If Manning doesn't want to coach, perhaps he could mentor some quarterbacks about the art of playing the position and understanding offenses and defenses.  That's what he was doing with Ryan Tannehill, based on the respect and rapport Manning has with Adam Gase.  Of course, there's also a Colts connection involved as well: Gase's new offensive coordinator with the Dolphins is Clyde Christensen, who was a long-time assistant coach in Indianapolis.  He spent several seasons coaching wide receivers before taking over as offensive coordinator, though only working with Manning for one season (2010) before the star missed the entire 2011 season due to injury.  It's clear that Manning has plenty of respect for Christensen, however, and in fact Adam Gase used to call Christensen for advice on how to coach Manning.  When Gase was hired as the head coach of the Dolphins this offseason, he brought Christensen, who served the past four seasons as the Colts' quarterbacks coach for Andrew Luck, with him as offensive coordinator.  In other words, Manning is helping two of his former offensive coordinators out by tutoring Ryan Tannehill, which will hopefully help the quarterback develop into a better overall player.

It's certainly no surprise that, with Adam Gase and Clyde Christensen on board to lead the Dolphins' offense, Peyton Manning offered to help however possible.  For Ryan Tannehill, that meant talking with him about the offense and about the art of playing the quarterback position in the first place, and Manning isn't a bad one to learn from.