NFL Divisional Round Playoffs!

[NJDevs4978]

And all of a sudden it comes out that Peyton has been playing with a torn quad for the last month....how IN THE HELL did Denver get away with not listing this on the injury report for a month??? Seriously??

(not that I doubt the injury, but if this was Belichek and Brady people would be going nuts about this)

Did he miss practice? You probably don't have to report jack if he's fully practicing and is 100% going to play. If he is missing/limited from practice you gotta put something on an injury report beyond lower body.

Edited January 12, 2015 by NJDevs4978

[CRASHER]

Did he miss practice? You probably don't have to report jack if he's fully practicing and is 100% going to play. If he is missing/limited from practice you gotta put something on an injury report beyond lower body.

 

Honestly I have nooooo idea, I don't remember them saying he did or didn't......still sounds fishy to me though, I had tuned out a lot of Denver news in the last month aside of the RB status

[Hi, I'm VALUE!]

Peyton was listed as having a "thigh" injury for week's 16, 17, and 19, though he only did limited practice in Week 16 only and was no worse than probable in any week.

 

His last "monster" performance was the second half of the Dolphin game.  He faceplanted against the Chiefs and Bills (both stellar pass defenses) and then had an OK game against the Chargers, missing only one series.

[Colorado Rockies 1976]

 

Damn...that is pretty funny.

 

I was never a huge Peyton fan because I never liked the guys who shrink when the stakes get higher...there was always the Peyton fanboy crowd who would lose their minds when Manning would pad his numbers against completely overmatched teams.  He was definitely great at carving up and beating up on bad defenses. 

 

For that matter, like I said before...I'm not surprised about Talib not doing much yesterday either.  Talib is the guy who picks off a desperation "what-the-hell" heave in the 4th quarter with his team up by 20+ points, then beats his chest, talks a lot of smack to the opposition, then dances around like he just won a Super Bowl.  But when it's not going his way...his play quickly drops off and he's throwing little temper tantrums, taking penalties, and basically losing his cool.  Saw it happen against the Broncos in the playoffs last season.     

 

Some harsh articles in the Denver Post today...some of these writers sound more like fans:

 

http://www.denverpost.com/paige/ci_27302350/broncos-didnt-show-up-again?source=pkg

 

I wrote a week ago that the Broncos had lots of talent, no soul. Most everyone with the franchise hated that description. There is no peace at Dove Valley now. The Broncos have no soul.

Disappointment is not a powerful enough word for what happened Sunday, as the young Andrew Luck outperformed old Peyton Manning, the young colts whipped the old broncos. It wasn't even a horse race.

This is another winter of our discontent. How long?

 

 

http://www.denverpost.com/kiszla/ci_27302464/kisza-truth-peyton-manning-is-done?source=pkg

 

The decision to fire Fox is a no-brainer. Even if the team is reluctant to swallow the money with the mistake of extending his contract less than 12 months ago, it will be hard to sell Broncos Country on bringing back Fox.

 

 

http://www.denverpost.com/hochman/ci_27302280/hochman-john-fox-has-run-out-chances-Denver

 

This wasn't a football game. This was a funeral.

So now, an obituary.

The Broncos' premature playoff exit must be followed by the termination of coach John Fox.

He's out of chances. Fire Fox.

For the third consecutive season, Fox's Broncos faltered in the postseason, this one at home and as seven-point favorites against the Indianapolis Colts.

What's the message the Broncos would send by bringing him back?

...

Perhaps here's the saddest thought about all of this: After that performance, does it even matter if you fire Fox, because as long as Manning is the quarterback, you're not going to win the Super Bowl anyway, right? Is that where we are now with this team? On Sunday morning, the Broncos were Super Bowl contenders, ready to roll over Indy and head to New England. By Sunday night, they're an overmatched mess with a liability under center? One game changed everything — everything. The Super-Bowl-with-Peyton window appears to have closed, that fast.

But even if Manning retires, the goal will still be the Super Bowl, just getting there a different way. But if Fox couldn't get it done with this team, one believes he won't with a new-look team.

 

[Daniel]

What I've always said about Peyton, is that if you were either rebuilding or had an expansion team with no one in particular as the head coach or GM (e.g. you don't have a Bill Walsh or Belichik type), and you had to pick one QB to lead you from start to finish that was getting thrown into the wringer immediately, I'd go with Manning every single time.  That is, if Brady gets his start with the '98 Colts, who knows if he ends up on The Bachelor. 

[Colorado Rockies 1976]

We've discussed this before Dan...I'm not making this a Manning/Brady debate, but Brady got thrown into a bit of a ringer himself.  The Pats had lost 19 of their previous 26 games before he got his chance.  The feeling was the Pats' O-line needed to be completely re-tooled (and was a big reason for Bledsoe's struggles).  A poll taken among GMs had the Patriots being the least likely team to win a Super Bowl in the next five seasons just before the 2001 season.  People were already questioning whether or not Belichick was the right coach for the Patriots, or even a good NFL coach period...BB was not proven as a head coach yet...a lot of people thought he was kind of a joke as a HC at that point (remembering his Cleveland stint), and the Pats were getting ripped for giving up as much as they did in compensation to get him. 

 

I think you feel that Belichick made Brady and that Brady couldn't have succeeded unless the circumstances were specific, but I think Brady has had an awful lot to do with Belichick being successful as well...especially in recent seasons, as Brady has had to cover up for the Pats often being well below-average on defense for several years (though it looks like that tide may finally be turning). 

[Daniel]

We've discussed this before Dan...I'm not making this a Manning/Brady debate, but Brady got thrown into a bit of a ringer himself.  The Pats had lost 19 of their previous 26 games before he got his chance.  The feeling was the Pats' O-line needed to be completely re-tooled (and was a big reason for Bledsoe's struggles).  A poll taken among GMs had the Patriots being the least likely team to win a Super Bowl in the next five seasons just before the 2001 season.  People were already questioning whether or not Belichick was the right coach for the Patriots, or even a good NFL coach period...BB was not proven as a head coach yet...a lot of people thought he was kind of a joke as a HC at that point (remembering his Cleveland stint), and the Pats were getting ripped for giving up as much as they did in compensation to get him. 

 

I think you feel that Belichick made Brady and that Brady couldn't have succeeded unless the circumstances were specific, but I think Brady has had an awful lot to do with Belichick being successful as well...especially in recent seasons, as Brady has had to cover up for the Pats often being well below-average on defense for several years (though it looks like that tide may finally be turning). 

 

Agree that it's not worth it to go down that road much further.  But just to clarify, I'm not saying that the Pats could have thrown in Billy Joe Hobert and have had the same success.  And almost every other team in the past 15 years is much, much better if Tom Brady is the QB.  But if there's one QB during that time that we really know can take almost any team and make them at the very least a perennial playoff team, it's, or perhaps was Manning. 

[Colorado Rockies 1976]

Agree that it's not worth it to go down that road much further.  But just to clarify, I'm not saying that the Pats could have thrown in Billy Joe Hobert and have had the same success.  And almost every other team in the past 15 years is much, much better if Tom Brady is the QB.  But if there's one QB during that time that we really know can take almost any team and make them at the very least a perennial playoff team, it's, or perhaps was Manning. 

 

Based on what?  Denver had made the playoffs the previous season with Tim Tebow as the QB, and had even won a playoff game, so clearly it stands to reason that upgrading the QB position would only help to strengthen them (clearly it did).  Manning had a lot of talent surrounding him on offense in many of his years with the Colts too...kind of helped his cause (as did playing in a dome quite a bit).  Some will point to the Pats going 11-5 when Brady got hurt, and the Colts going 2-14 without Manning.  The circumstances of those seasons were clearly different:  there was every reason to believe that Brady would recover fully, and there was still a lot of talent left over from 2007...it made a lot of sense to not give up on 2008.  In the Colts' case, no one was really sure what Manning was going to be when he came back, or if he even could (some though his career might be over, or at the very least, severely diminished), and he was starting to get up there in years to boot.  And then there's Andrew Luck, ready to picked #1 overall and who just about everyone thinks is going to be the Next Great QB.  Do the math...the Colts started their season with friggin' rickety Kerry Collins as their starter to begin the season.  Does that sound like a team that's trying to soldier on without their long-time QB?  I won't say it was an outright tank-job, but suffice it to say that the Colts weren't trying to put the best possible product on the field that season...if they had, even a little bit, they probably could've won 3-4 more games (and lost out on Luck in the process). 

 

Brady has shown the ability to make due with whatever he's got, and as times it hasn't been very much.  Show me a season where Peyton's #1 receiver was Reche Caldwell.   

 

Again, this is not a Brady vs. Manning thing...it's more about picking the myth of Manning apart.  Clearly the guy is going to go down as an all-time great, even with the playoff and big-game failures, and he should.  In a lot of ways I don't even really lump this last poor performance in with the others...I think this is more of a case of a guy getting old and no longer being what he was.