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Peyton Manning is done!
Peyton Manning is back!
It was a roller coaster of thoughts regarding Denver Broncos quarterback Peyton Manning in their stunning 31-24 win over the Kansas City Chiefs at Arrowhead Stadium Thursday night.
Here’s the truth with the 39-year-old future Hall of Famer — it’s a little bit both. In two games to start the 2015 season Manning has completed 50-85 passes for 431 yards, three touchdowns and two interceptions. He’s averaging 5.07 yards per attempt and has a long-completion of 22 yards, with a QB rating of 74.2. Spin that anyway you want and it’s not good.
On the other hand, Manning is being taken out of his comfort zone by new head coach Gary Kubiak, who is exhibiting the worst trait of coaches in sports — asking players to mold themselves to the coach instead of adjusting to the player. Manning needs to be allowed to do what he’s done successfully his entire career playing out of shotgun and use his brain to overcome his current physical limitations.
This happened in the second half against the Chiefs which saw Manning complete 13-of-26 passes for 140 yards. That’s still not good, but it’s better.
CBS Sports’ Jared Dubin put together these numbers for the Broncos when they played shotgun versus under center from last night’s game:
Denver’s offense was clearly more effective when slanted towards what made Manning more comfortable. Even with that positive showing I’d still have concerns about Manning. His entire career he’s been the one lifting and making those around him better. Now Manning is relying on a talented group of position players to make him better. His accuracy is inconsistent, he’s moving less in the pocket and taking sacks quicker, and throwing more 50/50 balls instead of leading receivers open. Manning threw one pick to Marcus Peters and the Chiefs secondary easily could have had multiple.
It’s also early in the season with Manning being healthy and playing in perfect conditions. What happens when he gets a little banged up plus the weather gets a little chilly? How’s Manning going to handle rain and snow?
Last season when Manning’s play started to head in the wrong direction Denver got elite play from their run game featuring C.J. Anderson to partially hide the issue. So far in 2015 the Broncos are averaging 2.8 yards per carry on 47 attempts with neither Anderson or Ronnie Hillman able to establish any sort of consistency behind a porous offensive line. Can Kubiak get his historically quality run game back on track to help his aging QB?
There’s still more questions than answers through two games when it comes to Manning. The Broncos defense is good enough to carry them through long portions of this season, especially their next four games at the Detroit Lions, vs. the Minnesota Vikings, at the Oakland Raiders and at the Cleveland Browns.
The AFC West and AFC overall is too good this season to be a one-dimensional team.
There was some good to take from Manning’s Thursday night performance to see growth potentially happening. There were also reasons to be concerned that it might not. When writing columns you’re supposed to take a side, it’s going to be good or bad, but in this case if anyone is being honest it’s impossible to know what’s going to happen with Manning the rest of this season. There’s evidence you can use to support both directions. This one we’re going to have to wait and see how it plays out.
