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| The Colts really dropped the ball on finding a decent backup quarterback for Peyton Manning for 2011. |
I do not even know how to put in words how bad this Colts team is this season. The best way for me to describe them is that they are even worse than the Detroit Lions team that went 0-16 a few years ago. With the Patriots, Ravens, Titans, and Texans still left on their schedule, it looks like their only shot at winning a game might be a road game to Jacksonville in the last week of the season. However, this team has shown no pride all season long and I cannot imagine them putting up a good game the last week of the season on the road just so that they can win one game.
To give you a clue at how bad this team is, they are 30th in scoring offense and 32nd in scoring defense. This totals up to them being outscored by 177 points this season, for an average of losing by over 16 points a game. That goes to show how far away this team is away from winning a game.
Earlier this season, when the Dolphins did not have a win, at least they were losing close games and fighting hard. They then went on a three game winning streak before falling on Thanksgiving to the Cowboys on a last second field goal. The Chiefs were being massively outscored early in the season, but they went on a winning streak of their own after they beat the Colts, before losing Matt Cassel for the year (after already losing three other big time playmakers earlier in the season). The Rams are the only other team that is even in contention for being as bad as the Colts and they have even managed to win two games.
People make the argument that the Colts playing this poorly goes to show that Peyton Manning has to be the greatest quarterback ever, mentioning that the Patriots still won 11 games without Tom Brady. I disagree. This fact should not be a comparison between Manning and Brady, but between Curtis Painter and Matt Cassel.
Cassel went to the Pro Bowl last season by guiding an extremely untalented Chiefs team to a division title. Painter, on the other hand, has shown us he is a completely inept quarterback who is clearly dreaming of days in which he gets paid millions of dollars to sit behind Manning once again. You cannot state that Manning is better than Brady because Brady had a better backup. There is no logic to that argument.
Whether or not Manning is better than Brady, his team is clearly hopeless without him. That falls entirely on the coaching staff. This team clearly had given up before the season even started. Manning is an incredible leader and apparently there is not another leader in the Colts' locker room because they continuously put up uninspired performances.
The Colts play as if they do not care whether they win or lose because everyone expects them to lose without Manning. It is the coaches' jobs to snuff out that type of attitude and get their team prepared for their games each and every week. I would be shocked if numerous coaches in Indianapolis did not lose their jobs over this season, and they would be well deserved firings.
It is shocking to me, and to mostly everyone that watches football, that the Colts had not even thought about finding a decent backup quarterback for Manning, especially considering the media has been mocking the Colts for years now for consistently having the worst backup quarterback in the league. They have gotten away with it for a long time, but this season is a perfect portrayal of their negligence.
Considering how little we have heard from Manning since the start of the season, I really think his injury is much worse than anyone is reporting. Despite my strong dislike of Peyton, it would be a shame for the entire NFL if this was the end of his career. However, I still strongly believe that the Colts will draft Stanford quarterback Andrew Luck regardless and start planning on their future, so to avoid a season like this again. Whether or not Peyton stays with the Colts, so long as he is healthy, may come down to financial issues as well as Peyton's willingness to groom his ultimate successor.
This will be one of the most heated offseason topics and it certainly would be interesting to see Peyton in a different uniform in 2012.
I agree. I've gone from feeling bad for this team to thinking that they're getting out what they're putting in. No one expected this team would go much better than 6-10 without Peyton, but there's no excuse for going 0-16.
ReplyDeleteI legitimately thought they'd beat Carolina last week. Heck, even a terrible Panthers team last year managed to piece together a few wins. (Just ask me! I worked for a 49ers team that lost to them.) As you said, they're not even in games right now! The fact they opened as a nearly unprecedented 21-point underdog to New England is flat out pathetic. It was also sad to see Tony Dungy admit on Sunday Night Football that he'd never bought into the need for a backup QB and admitted that his philosophy had come back to bite them this season.
Lastly, I agree that this says nothing about whether Peyton is better or worse than Tom Brady. Tom Brady's always gotten more out of less. Just because Matt Cassel ALSO got more out of less doesn't mean that somehow because Kerry Collins, Curtis Painter, Dan Orlovsky - heck, Alex Shelmire, if he volunteers to play - gets less out of more somehow makes Peyton better than Brady.