Just How Good Is Peyton Manning and What Does His Injury Mean for the AFC?

When Indianapolis Colts owner Jim Irsay woke up this morning he thought Kerry Collins was the teams seat warmer for a week or two while Peyton Manning fully recovered from his 2^nd neck surgery in 19 months.  Make that 3 neck surgeries in 19 months and one panic attack for Irsay. News broke today that Manning was forced to have a second neck surgery, this one a cervical neck fusion, after his May 23 surgery to repair a bulging disk. The Colts official statement said that the surgery was uneventful and there is no timetable for his return. He’s been listed under the dreaded category of “out-indefinitely”, never a good place to be on the injury report. The team will not put Manning on injured reserve officially ending his season so there is a possibility he’ll be back but it doesn’t look good.

This breaking news will have an immediate and far reaching impact on the AFC South and the conference as a whole. Being a New England Patriots lifer I tend to gravitate towards Tom Brady as the games best QB but Peyton Manning puts up quite an argument. The man is a an absolute horse having started 227 straight games (including the playoffs) and set an NFL record last year with 470 completions. A look at Petyon Manning’s career highlights side bar on his Wikipedia page shows just how good he’s been since being the first overall pick in 1998. He’s a 4 time MVP (NFL record), holds the NFL record for most consecutive 4,000 yard seasons (6 from 99-04 with a current streak of 5), is an 11 time pro bowler, Super Bowl MVP and champion, not to mention he was the fastest player to 50,000 yards passing and 1,000, 2,000, 3,000, and 4,000 completions. He is the Indianapolis Colts entire team without him they are a subpar team; I’m talking like 4-12 team maybe 3-13.

This past season he was asked to do basically everything for his team with no running game in sight (sorry Joseph ‘Live and Let’ Addai and Donald Brown you guys suck with Manning you’ll suck without him too) and a receiving corps consisting of Reggie Wayne, a bunch of undrafted white guys (I’m looking at you Blair White and Austin Collie), and the only guy with a French name in the whole league (Pierre Garcon). Once his ever-reliable TE Dallas Clark went down he didn’t flinch but rather turned Jacob Tamme into Dallas Clark causing a mass frenzy on the fantasy league waiver wires. He turned less than serviceable receivers into 1,000 yard guys and masked a defense that for years has been Dwight Freeney, Robert Mathis and scraps. Remember a few years back when he won a game against the Dolphins when he only controlled the ball for 15 minutes....15 minutes out of a 60 minute game! The guy was always a threat to score on you in a heartbeat, believe me I know as a Pats diehard. It was scary watching him pick apart your defense with precision and accuracy while you know in the back of your mind that you have zero chance of stopping him. The Colts have made 9 consecutive playoff trips the longest such streak in NFL history, expect that to change with this crushing news for Colts fans.

Every year the Colts asked more and more from Manning and every year he delivered while the talent around him got substantially worse. Yes, he played on some dynamite teams in the mid 2000’s (when Marvin Harrison, Reggie Wayne, Edgerrin James, Tarik Glenn, Ryan Diem, and Jeff Saturday anchored the offense) but in the past 3 or 4 years all of those guys have either seen a decline in their careers or been left as the lone soldier to produce (Reggie Wayne). Without Manning at the helm the Colts will have to rely on either the previously retired Kerry Collins (no way he’s in the mental state to be a full time starter after being retired he thought he was getting a short term gig) or Curtis Painter, he of the career stats of 2-8 for 83 yards, 0 TD, 2 INTs. Good luck with that Jim Caldwell we’ll see how good a coach you really are this year.

What’s this all mean for the AFC South? It means that had Jacksonville not just cut their starting QB and weren’t starting Josh McCown they might have had a good shot at taking down the division. The Titans with Matt Hasselback also now have a pretty good shot at surprising a lot of people and sneaking into the playoffs but the team affected the most is the Houston Texans. The Texans are a chic pick to make the playoffs due to their revamping on defense with the hiring of Wade Phillips (he was meant to be a DC not a HC) and drafting of stud pass rushers J.J. Watt (love the name) and Brooks Reed. With their high octane offense already in place and the Colts taking a major step backwards this might actually be the year that Gary Kubiak can get his Texans over that .500 hump and into the playoffs for the franchises first playoff berth. 

The past few years the only thing standing in the Texans and the playoffs was Peyton Manning and his propensity for smoking them in a game down the stretch and sending them into a downward spiral that ended up costing them their season. Their defense had zero shot of ever stopping him and the Colts were going to make the playoffs over the Texans everyday of the week and twice on Sunday. Without their field general though the Texans look like a hot commodity right now and I think the defense will finally catch up to the offense and get them into the wild card round of the AFC playoffs.

As for the conference it’s obvious that a major heavyweight has been dealt a big body blow. The Jets, Patriots, Steelers, Ravens and Chargers (any else who thinks they are a contender in the AFC it’s time to grow up) are all silently jumping for joy at the fact that none of them will have to go through Peyton Manning and Lucas Oil Stadium to get to the AFC championship or Super Bowl. The field just lost one of its prize horses and as a Patriots I couldn’t be happier to know I’ll see #18 in blue on the sidelines during the yearly showdown between the two heavyweights of the AFC. 

Until We Cross Paths Again,

Geoff Jablonski