It isn’t like it’s easy.
Curtis Painter, Dan Orlovsky, and Kerry Collins were all drafted higher than Tom Brady (that’s all 3 of the Colts’ backups).
Except that the very capable Aaron Rodgers backed up Favre (not exactly a shitty starter.)
That’s different. Rodgers was drafted to replace Favre- nobody thought he’d last another five years- and when the Packers drafted Rodgers, Favre arguably was shitty (70 and 72 quarterback ratings the previous two seasons).
Anyway, what happened to the Packers? They were forced to choose between their backup and their starter.
The very capable Aaron Rodgers was a draft pick and had no choice. Very capable free agents do not typically sign to be backups unless they aren’t good enough to be starters, in which case I question their capabilities.
Sorry. Didn’t know we were talking about free agents.
How can anyone argue that this is all about Manning? The is a crappy team and this is a team put together by the management. Manning let them get lazy, but the fact is this team is not simply the result of Manning being out, it is the result of the GM and staff putting together a team that once you get past Manning is not very good.
The arguments have all been made already, but to summarize:
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Manning had the offense designed around him. His backups can’t run it. I suppose that’s a management issue, but Peyton had never once missed a game to this point.
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His performance on offense hides the defense. It has for years. The longer he’s on the field the less time the defense has to get exposed. Now they’re exposed and getting worn out because the offense can’t stay on the field.
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A team that wins 10 games a year every year for a decade is not egregiously mismanaged. Sometimes the picks just don’t work out.
IMO it’s a team that doesn’t believe it can win without Manning and has simply given up.
I think this bears repeating, and expanding on. It’s not just that his performance hides the flaws on defense; it’s that the defense is specifically designed to take advantage of his performance.
With the amount of money the Colts always have tied up in the offense, they can’t field a top flight defense. So, they built a defense to stop the pass, and relied on Manning to force teams to abandon the run.
That’s not bad management; it’s brilliant management. Nobody until Dungy and Polian every thought of building a defense around a quarterback.
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IMO it’s a team that doesn’t believe it can win without Manning and has simply given up.
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I don’t disagree. I think management reinforced this when they ran out to sign Kerry Collins, which sent the message that the team couldn’t win with Curtis Painter.
In point of fact, Painter has played pretty well for a guy taking his first NFL snaps.
I think I exaggerated as a comment on how awful the Colts are this year, but I don’t think I was totally off the wall. The team was on a bit of a downhill slope last year, but they’ve fallen off a cliff after losing Manning. It’s not just that they didn’t have a backup QB ready either- it’s that they didn’t realize until very late in the offseason that Manning wasn’t going to be able to play and then that he was going to miss a big chunk of the year, if not the whole thing. That’s when they rushed out to sign Collins.
Seems Rob Gronkowski had himself an interesting bye week.
I’ve said before that if you don’t trust your backup to go out and play when your starter gets hurt for an extended period of time you need to get a new backup. Pittsburgh would never have gone out to get Kerry Collins if Ben went down, they’d roll with Batch or Dixon like they have in the past. The fact that they went out and got Collins is a huge statement about what they think of Painter, and if they hold him in such low regard they should have gotten rid of him and gotten someone else.