I'm still feeling my way through NFL, but the Broncos look like the real deal this year.
Well hopefully the Broncos and Peyton Manning can win in the cold. I think that's the true challenge facing the Broncos, and Manning's inability to win in cold weather situations.
This is a repetition of a long-standing fallacious argument. In football, quarterbacks do not duel against each other. Yes, I know, that is the way the media portrays the situation but it is simply not true.
(Disclaimer: I am neither a Broncos fan nor a Peyton Manning groupie. But I admire Manning's ability, leadership and work ethic.)
In every football game there are actually two games being played. Game #1 is Team A's offensive line against Team B's defensive line, and Game #2 is Team B's offensive line against Team A's defensive line. (There is also the special teams contest and the crucial issue of clock management but let's not complicate things.) If Team A's QB leads his guys to four touchdowns and Team B's QB leads his 'O' line to six TDs then Team B wins. This has nothing to do with the QB of Team A and everything to do with the defensive line of Team A.
Football is a
team sport. All parts of the team have to win for any part of the team to win. Sure, a collapse of one line can be catastrophic for the other line but Manning himself has never, in my memory, suffered that sort of collapse. He's thrown a lot of balls that were on time, on target but weren't caught or run into the end zone. That happens to a lot of QBs and is not the QB's fault. Saying that "Manning can't win in cold weather" is just repeating a silly bit of fluff blown out of some media orifice.
Fact: Peyton Manning's record is 4-for-7 in games where the temperature is 32ºF (0ºC) or below at kickoff. That is better than 500 ball. Last weekend the Packers lost a home-field game to the 49ers --- does that mean that the Packers can't play in the cold? Of course not.
Fact: In Week 14 (08 Dec 2013) the Broncos played the Titans when the temperature was 18ºF (-6ºC) at kickoff and dropped throughout the game.
Fact: Manning's stats for that game are 39 completions for 59 attempts, for a total of 397 yards through the air, with four TD completions and zero interceptions. The other 23 points scored by the Broncos were part of the team effort, most of them scored after Manning had led them within striking distance.
Fact: The final score was Broncos 51 : Titans 28.
Did Manning win? Yes, as part of the overall Broncos win. But it certainly showed that Manning can play in the cold.
Bartender, a round of Gatorade for the house