After Kirkpatrick stunned Manning on the 30-yard pick six with 2:41 left in the game to expand the 30-28 lead as the rain turned into swirling flurries, he preserved it just a minute and a half later with a full-out extension interception at the Bengals 5 while somehow keeping his feet in before spilling out of bounds.

“I’m thinking, ‘They’ve got to play me now,'” says Kirkpatrick with his signature cackle.

It’s a sequence that didn’t seem to make it into Peyton’s Places when Manning returned to shoot a few scenes this summer.

“I think he buried them,” Kirkpatrick says.

Kirkpatrick started ever since, including the next week in the AFC North title game that the Steelers won in Pittsburgh, and the week after that in the Colts’ Wild Card win in Indianapolis, and through the rest of his eight seasons with the Bengals.

(An asterisk: The next year, the Giants came to Paycor to participate in a joint practice to start the preseason, and in a drill Kirkpatrick picked Eli Manning throwing to Odell Beckham Jr. He made it official in 2016 when he picked Eli in New York in a regular-season game.

“That’s got to be a rarity,” says Kirkpatrick of picking both Mannings.

Not really, says Elias. More than 30 players have got them both.)

When Kirkpatrick retired after one-year stints in Arizona and San Francisco in 2021, the Alabama native who helped lead the Crimson Tide to two national championships put down roots on the eastern fringe of Cincinnati.

“I’ve never left,” says Kirkpatrick. “I’m from a small town back home in Alabama. Not a lot going on. Going from Gadsden to Tuscaloosa, from Tuscaloosa to Cincinnati, Cincinnati was the biggest city I ever lived in.

“I made so many friends here. I was here for eight years. It just didn’t make any sense for me to just up and leave, no matter if I was playing for another team or not. I have my family here, and I see the potential and the opportunity to be a businessman here as well. Once I looked at all of the things that was put in front of me, it was just the perfect fit.”

Just like he was that on that Monday night when he surfaced in the second half, and analyst Jon Gruden told play-by-play man Mike Tirico on the national telecast that Manning had to go after “Kirkpatrick, the young cornerback.”

Kirkpatrick played just 22 snaps that night, and that’s only because his position coach, Vance Joseph, won a second-half debate on the sidelines: “If Dre can’t play, I can’t coach, and I know I can coach. Put him in the bleeping game.”