Uhh Manning was awful this season. 9 tds, 17 INT, that's Hoyer-esque. Kubiak coached his ass off and made chicken salad out of chicken ****.
This was precisely the reason they made the rule change. Too many people, including some kickers, felt that the PAT was too automatic. They wanted to make it more challenging so that it would be more of a factor in game rather than a formality.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Worth noting, <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Patriots?src=hash">#Patriots</a> proposed the longer extra points in games. Get what you ask for, I suppose.</p>— Charles Robinson (@CharlesRobinson) <a href="https://twitter.com/CharlesRobinson/status/691406953919045632">January 24, 2016</a></blockquote> <script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
and continued winning no matter what QB he had. Wade and Gary deserve a ton of credit they will never get from Salty Texans fans
Making XPs an actual relevant part of football is neither bad for the game or for the fans. 35 yard FGs are not difficult, and he was 52 for 52 on the longer XPs this year. Besides, the Patriots had an opportunity to make up that point and simply failed. If you don't like there being any chance of a miss at all, then why have XPs at all?
Peyton Manning's arm certainly isn't what it once was but as others have noted his value isn't just passing but someone who can change plays and formations on the fly on the field. Hoyer or Mallet don't have the experience or offensive mind to do that as well as Manning.
Or anyone else who stepped in as qb, Manning runs that offense not Kubiak and the defense won this game.
Wade deserves a ton of credit but I'm not convinced kubiak does. Despite Peyton moving the ball, kubiak continued to waste possessions with an ineffective running game. He got lucky that the defense kept holding up. His clock management was bad at the end and he blew a challenge. The difference was wades defense holding up and that is largely because the Broncos have invested in very good secondary players and multiple pass rushers. Elway vs smith is a huge advantage
Not going to underscore the value of Manning, but they've scored 20 and 23 points the last two weeks, with a handful of those being handed to them by their defense. By pre-Manning Kubiak-standards, this is an awful offense. But apparently an elite defense can still get you to a SB all by itself.
So who wins Denver or Carolina? From what I just saw from Denver's D, it's hard for me to pick against them, no matter how stagnant their offense is.
Carolina's defense is also something fierce... and Cam is the exact mobile-type QB that can give the Wade-blitzing scheme trouble. It won't be the for-sure blowout everybody will claim (I expect Carolina will be a double-digit favorite), but it would surprise me if Denver won.
And that's why they play the games. MVP of this game was Ninja, straight from shaolin temple. His words made the refs give that defense an extra 1/2 a second to hit brady after releasing the ball. It gave brady happy feet. shouldn't have even been close if manning connects on their last scoring drive but that's foosball.
Keep in mind they've played two very tough D's the last two weeks also. Again I will agree that Manning isn't close to the Manning of a couple of years ago. He's lacking the arm strength and the zip on ball to thread the needle. He's still got enough arm to be a better than average, not elite, QB. Also when he's healthy he can still play well enough and be smart enough to not cost the game. I think the last two games are a good example. With a good D Peyton Manning can still make enough plays to get a lead and then make enough good decisions not to put the team and the D in a deep hole. That's a lot different than Schaub or Hoyer who just killed the team with terrible decisions.
Blew out Seattle. For a half anyways... Blowing out Arizona? Hopefully complete the trifecta at the Super Bowl.
