DENVER – From Peyton Manning overcoming four neck surgeries to Adrian Peterson’s rebound from a shredded knee to Chuck Pagano’s fight with leukemia, this has been the Year of the Comeback in the NFL.

A season besmirched by tragedies, replacement officials and a bounty scandal also will go down as one in which some of the game’s greats not only regained their old form but somehow surpassed it.

There are always feel-good stories about those who overcome long odds and broken bodies to regain at least a sliver of their past glory. This season provided an abundance of them.