Christian Ponder was grocery shopping when Broncos called

New Broncos quarterback Christian Ponder says he was grocery shopping for Thanksgiving when the team called him about a job…

It was a seemingly normal day for Christian Ponder, who apparently was out getting some items needed for Thanksgiving when the Denver Broncos got in touch with him. He says he’s been anxiously waiting for that call to come.

“I’ve been in Phoenix—we live there for the offseason—just working out, waiting for the call to come and fortunately it did yesterday when I was shopping for groceries for Thanksgiving. I had to drop everything and get on a flight. Again, I’m excited to be here.”

Apparently, he also had a run-in with the Sheriff himself — Peyton Manning — as he arrived at team headquarters.

“I shook his hand for a second. Honestly, I’ve been grabbed and had to go sign these papers and get a physical and do all that stuff, so I haven’t had a time to talk to him much, but I did get to say hi.”

So what did they say to each other?

“Nothing really. I said, ‘Hey, glad to be here. Sorry about your ankle.’ Then they grabbed me to go do a physical. That was it.”

Oh shoot, does Peyton Manning have an ankle injury too, or did Ponder just mis-speak?

It was such a fast moving process for Ponder and the Broncos that he didn’t even have time to pack his own bag.

“My wife (ESPN’s Samantha Ponder) packed my bag. I don’t even know what’s in there. I had to go do a bunch of stuff to be able to leave. She packed my bag. One thing is you don’t know if they’re going to sign you or if you’re going to come back home, so you packed a couple of warm things and probably have to do a little shopping here and there.”

In a year where quarterbacks have been dropping like flies, Ponder said that he’s had a couple of workouts this season but nothing has materialized until now.

“I worked out for Dallas earlier. That actually did not go well at all. I had a bad workout. I worked out for Tennessee a few weeks ago. That went really well. I don’t know if they were actually interested in a quarterback at the time, but I thought that went well. Then this was the third.”

The Broncos signed Ponder for veteran insurance, and likely because Peyton Manning’s foot (and ankle, too?) injury is worse than the team initially anticipated. He’ll have an opportunity to compete with Trevor Siemian for the primary backup job to Brock Osweiler, but for now, the Broncos just gave Ponder a whole other reason to be celebrating Thanksgiving on Thursday.