Peyton’s surprising path

I have been quite surprised at some of the collateral damage from Peyton Manning’s search for a new team.

At first I thought he was going to Miami or the Cardinals, two teams without very successful or popular QB’s. However recently the focus has shifted to the Broncos, 49ers and the Titans, three teams that had QB’s that all were successful last season to varying degrees.

The Titans have Matt Hasselback, an older QB with a history of injury but statistically he had a good year throwing for over 3500 yards with 18 TD’s.  Even so Peyton Manning would be a step up and he has a Tennessee connection since he went to college there.

The interest by the 49ers really surprised me since Alex Smith had a breakout year last season.  It seemed odd to me that they would be willing to so quickly walk away from that momentum although I did not realize that Smith was a free agent right now.

Then you have the Broncos and Tim Tebow.  Tebow, despite by all accounts being statistically horrendous, was a certifiable league sensation last year.  Somehow he managed a number of comeback wins despite posting numbers that would make most high school QB’s take a seat on the bench.

Of course during the season there were rumblings of overall dissatisfaction with Tebow as the team QB of the future since he seemed very poor at doing the one thing a QB is supposed to do, throw the ball.  Even so, I imagined that dramatic win against the Steelers in the playoffs would have at least bought him one year as the de facto starting QB where he would get a bonafide chance to prove if he can be a real NFL QB or if last year was just a series of flukes.

Well the latest headlines seem to indicate that Denver will be the winner of the Manning sweepstakes.  To be honest, of all of the teams that were mentioned as real contenders for his services, Denver seems like the least logical fit. I can hardly believe that God would allow this to happen to Tim.

Oh well, it will be interesting to see how it all shakes out.