Peyton Manning, Torn Plantar Fascia in Left Foot
Peyton had a very interesting day this past Sunday as the Broncos (7-1) hosted the KC Chiefs (3-5) in their week 9 match-up. He broke Brett Favre’s passing yards record with a little 4 yard out route to RB Ronnie Hillman. After that pass with 10:38 in the first quarter, nothing worked for Denver’s offense. Manning had 3 picks in the first half. Including one by rookie sensation CB Marcus Peters, his second on Manning for the season. Manning’s final stats are as follows: 5/20, 35 yards passing, 4 picks, no TD’s. As he was pulled from the game in the 3rd quarter, in favor of backup QB Brock Osweiler, the Broncos had no points with Manning under center.
Fun stat of the day: Chiefs kicker Cairo Santos had as many field goals as Manning had completions (5).
A lot of the blame for Peyton Manning’s overall poor play this season has fallen on the shoulders of Head Coach Gary Kubiak. Kubiak’s system just doesn’t mesh with Peyton Manning, but with this injury coming to light, it’s not the entire story anymore. Sources say Manning has battled plantar fasciitis for weeks but is believed to have aggravated the injury against Indianapolis on Nov. 8, resulting in a partial tear of his plantar fascia. Partial tears are usually more painful to play on than clean tears and this could be a factor in his poor decisions with the football. Looking back at the tape of the 4 picks he threw against the Chiefs, none of them were because of physical faculties, it was all mental. Just plain 4 bad decisions on his part. Could this be the pain getting to his head? Kubiak’s system? We will never know for sure, but what we do know is that Denver needs to let Manning fully heal if they want to be competitive come postseason.
There is no indication on how long, or even if Manning will be out. But head coach Gary Kubiak talked about Manning and his outlook the rest of the season at Denver’s QB position. “If [Manning’s] healthy and ready to go, Peyton is our quarterback.”
Following the game, Manning didn’t know whether it was a “fair assessment” to say he looked more comfortable in warm-ups than he did in the game and he said;
“Oh, I can’t … I don’t know,” Manning said with a sigh. “I can’t say that. I guess that’s an observation. I just didn’t — I thought I felt good enough to play, that’s what I thought. Maybe that was the wrong — maybe that was a false feeling by me or whatever that was. … I was honest with them with how I felt, thought I was good enough to play.”
“Maybe looking back that was the wrong. I had the wrong indication by me. And by going out there trying to help the team, I ended up hurting the team. I’m disappointed about that.”
No matter how long he is out, the injury will affect the entire team the rest of the year if he never fully recovers. While they are almost a shoo-in to make the postseason, without a good playmaking QB, postseason wins are hard to come by. Suddenly, things aren’t looking to good in Denver.
