It has just been announced on NFL.com\u00a0that Peyton Manning will miss the season opener versus the Houston Texans. This news comes straight from Bill Polian speaking on ESPN radio.\u00a0 Kerry Collins will be the starter.<\/p>\n
Last night it was announced that the Jaguars had released former starting QB David Garrard.\u00a0 This pushes Luke McCown into the starting role and makes Blaine Gabbert the recent first round draft pick the top back-up.<\/p>\n
These moves could really shake up what the top of the division looks like this year.\u00a0 The Houston Texans were an explosive offense last year but were held back by the second worst defense in the league (stats based on footballoutsiders.com advanced metrics).\u00a0 They brought in Wade Phillips as defensive co-ordinator to change the mentality on defense. Phillips is known for his ability to turn around the fortunes of a defense, add to that the fact that they spent their first five draft picks on defense and get some key defenders back from last year.\u00a0 Then there is the signing of Jonathan Joseph, one of the top CB’s in the league. If Houston can simply improve to a league average level on defense their offense should be able to carry them to the playoffs.<\/p>\n
The only defense worse than the Texans last year was the Jaguars.\u00a0 The Jags also finished 31st in pass D, the second straight year they were in the bottom five in pass D.\u00a0They also failed to draft any defenders until the fourth round this year.\u00a0This means alot of pressure will be placed on whoever ends up as the starting QB.\u00a0 Somehow the Jags were still able to win 8 games and were even in position to make the playoffs late in the year if they could have won some division games.<\/p>\n
As for Indy, the Manning injury is distracting from the fact that the Colts are in decline.\u00a0 Last year they finished 10-6, good enough to take the division. But even with a healthy Manning they dropped their first two division games and didnt have the play the remainder of their division games until very late in the season when they had rounded into shape.\u00a0 What you see when you watched Indy though was a team that played increasingly close games against tough competition.\u00a0 The team never able to pull away from decent opponents and only pulling out the victory because of Mannings complete control over the game and ability to pull out any victory as long as his team is within one score.<\/p>\n
The team is in decline because it has been a while since the Colts have had a decent draft.\u00a0 They are a top heavy team, relying on a few superstars to show up and win them the games and carry the rest of the mediocre players.\u00a0 As those superstars grow older this task becomes more difficult.\u00a0 With a healthy and practicing Manning it would be extremely difficult to predict anyone but Indy to win the division.\u00a0 But with this current squad and Manning sitting out Indy no longer feels like a powerhouse.\u00a0 Remember in 2008 when Manning was not able to practice in prior to the season the team opened up only 3-4 before rallying to make the playoffs.\u00a0 If something simliar happens to start this season I don’t think they will have the talent to turn it around.<\/p>\n
Is this crazy talk, or will someone other than the Colts win the AFC South for only the third time since it\\s creation in 2002?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It has just been announced on NFL.com\u00a0that Peyton Manning will miss the season opener versus the Houston Texans. This news comes straight from Bill Polian speaking on ESPN radio.\u00a0 Kerry Collins will be the starter. Last night it was announced that the Jaguars had released former starting QB David Garrard.\u00a0 This pushes Luke McCown into […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4860,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5790],"tags":[6353,8043,13694,13892,14197,18458,20842,24002],"class_list":["post-48013","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nfl","tag-afc-south","tag-blaine-gabbert","tag-houston-texans","tag-indianapolis-colts","tag-jacksonville-jaguars","tag-matt-schaub","tag-peyton-manning","tag-tennessee-titans"],"modified_by":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/soccer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48013","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/soccer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/soccer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/soccer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4860"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/soccer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=48013"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/soccer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48013\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/soccer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48013"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/soccer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48013"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/soccer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48013"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}