Sometimes, a story grows legs. And darn it if these crazylegs start churning, and suddenly the story becomes a tall tale, extremely exaggerated, delightfully disproportionate to the actual truth.

I bet, to a man, some NFL fans believe this is the case with the whole Peyton Manning/work ethic narrative. I mean, how hard can a dude really work? Does he really put in that much more effort than the next guy?

We, of course, only get snippets. Occasional anecdotes. That pic of him in a helmet in the hot tub. And the reality that the quarterback is so good at such an old age, that surely he must be compensating for his age with dedication.

But then Rahim Moore puts it in perspective. Few Broncos do a sharper job at putting things in perspective than the safety Moore, who has the rare professional combo of enduring an infamous on-field snafu and an injury that nearly ended his career — and possibly his life.

Moore's quote had soul. I loved it. He was asked about Manning's recent hip-hop commercial, in which "Pey-Z" raps with his brother "Eazy Eli" (I made these nicknames up — please direct disgust to bhochman@denverpost.com). Moore talked about Manning having some fun in his off time, but that "we know when he gets on the field, he's going hard — like as if he never had a penny. That's how hard he works. You would think he never had done a commercial, none of that. He's training like he's a free agent."

Let it sink in. What a quote, right? Peyton Manning, one of the best talents of his generation, attacks practice as if his career is on the line, as if one bad day at the office and he's coaching high school, telling stories about once going to an NFL camp with Peyton Manning.

"Eighteen," as they call him at Dove Valley, was asked about the Moore quote. Was Rahim's assessment really just a tall tale?

"I had a coach taught me at an early age of treating practice like a game," Manning said of David Cutcliffe, his beloved coach from his Tennessee days. "To me this is where you become a better football team out here on the practice field. You don't just show up on a game and expect to be a good football team. I appreciate those words [from] Rahim. I think somebody taught me to practice like that as a young age. That would be my advice to any young players. Like I said, taking care of each other, you don't want to injure any player out there on the field because you're competing out here, you are going full speed up until maybe that point of contact. Trying to put yourself in those precious situations so when you get to the game, you feel like you've been there before.

"To me, this is where you become a better football team, out here on the practice field. You don't just show up on a game and expect to be a good football team."

Cutcliffe himself had a Peyton-like year last year, too — his Duke football team (Duke has football?) went to a big bowl. The coach and the quarterback remain close. Manning brings his receivers to Duke each offseason, and Cutcliffe said that he just "grinned" this year as the Broncos departed, knowing these guys were going to do something great.

"I told John Elway and John Fox," Cutcliffe said by phone, "when it looked like he was going to sign with them, 'You think you know what you're getting, you just don't really know until you're with him.' And I can see the effects, I see his fingerprints all over that organization.

"You're just never going to hear him moan. He just goes to work, and you can't work harder, because you can't work any harder than he does."

Benjamin Hochman: bhochman@denverpost.com or twitter.com/hochman