Peyton Manning gets benched for Brock Osweiler
Panic? YES
Even in what is almost surely going to be his final season of professional football, Manning probably couldn't have envisioned a performance quite as bad as the one he put on Sunday against Kansas City. He might have set the league's passing yardage record during the first half, but he also threw three picks before halftime for just the fourth time in his career. He added a fourth interception before coach Gary Kubiak mercifully brought in Osweiler. It was the first time Manning was benched since September 30, 2001, when he was with the Colts and then-coach Jim Mora took him out for Mark Rypien during a 44-13 loss to the Patriots. That game is famous for another reason: It was
Tom Brady's first career start.
Kubiak tried to take the blame afterward for Manning's subpar start, suggesting he should have sat him after he suffered a rib injury during the week, but it's hardly as if this were a one-off performance. (ESPN's Adam Schefter reported Monday morning that
Manning was also playing through a partially torn plantar fascia in his left foot.) It might have been Manning's first four-interception game of 2015, but he didn't look appreciably different from the struggling passer he has portrayed all season. This isn't like 2007, when Manning threw four picks in the first half of the season before a flukish six-interception disaster of a start against the Chargers. This has been a bad season at the office.
Manning has now thrown picks in nine consecutive games. That places him in dismal company. The list of quarterbacks who threw picks in nine consecutive games since 2000 isn't a pretty one. The names aren't the ones you associate with greatness. John Skelton. Ryan Leaf. Donovan McNabb's sojourn in Washington makes an appearance (you never want to be on a list with Donovan McNabb's year in D.C.). There are a couple of appearances by Philip Rivers and Drew Brees, but this is mostly a list of quarterbacks who were about to expire. The previous time Manning threw picks in even as many as six consecutive games was in 2001.
And while I'm sure Manning was affected by the rib and foot injuries, the issues Sunday against the Chiefs are the same ones he has had throughout this season. As much as his struggles are chalked up to his diminished arm strength,
that's just part of the problem.
It's not as if he's deadly accurate on short passes and just can't throw a 16-yard out anymore. Manning has lost a great deal of his touch and labors into and out of his throwing motion. He overthrows his receivers seemingly as frequently as he one-hops passes in their direction. The amount of torque he needs to generate with his body to get zip on his passes forces him to commit to his throws earlier, making it far easier for defenders to hijack previously clear throwing lanes. His lack of arm strength is at the heart of some of Manning's issues, but somebody like Chad Pennington was able to succeed without an NFL-caliber arm toward the end of his career while simultaneously posting solid interception rates.
Manning is a mess -- and sadly for Broncos fans, there's just not much of a reason to think things will get better. The arguments earlier in the season were that the Broncos needed to return to a more Manning-friendly scheme and get their offensive line right, and neither solution appears to be in the cards. Each of Manning's 20 pass attempts Sunday came in the shotgun or pistol, and he posted a 0.1 QBR on those throws. Further injuries to the offensive line have prevented the unit from jelling, and the running game that carried Denver over the regular-season finish line last year hasn't shown up since the Nov. 1 win over Green Bay. Denver still has a great defense, but when the opposition's average starting field position is 52 yards away from the end zone, as it was for the Chiefs on Sunday, even a dominant defense can do only so much.
The Broncos may have already banked enough victories to claim the West, but with Manning this altered, it's hard to see them doing much in January.
