[rQUOTEr]“Peyton has not passed our physical nor has he been cleared to play for The Indianapolis Colts,” Irsay said early Friday on his Twitter page. “Team statement coming on Friday.”[/rQUOTEr]
of course he won't pass "their" physical. He doesn't want to pay him 28 million and he doesnt want to be the guy that lets go a Peyton Manning after a passed physical.
I'm pretty sure it's dicey territory to have a guy "fail" a physical on purpose. That hurts his earning power on the open market. Could be grounds for a lawsuit. If they're going to part ways, I don't think it's going to be shady dealing like that.
I don't think it would take much massaging. All public accounts say his arm strength hasn't returned and he can't put enough velocity throws. He can be medically fine, 100% healthy...but if his arm isn't NFL level, that could be enough to flunk his physical. But I don't know the full ins and outs of NFL physicals and if they're tailored for specific positions.
My point was that they're not going to fail him on purpose, as in, he's fine... but they pepper the results to "fail" him anyway. If they don't want him back, he won't even get so far as to take the physical. They will cut him and that will be that. If they want him and he fails the physical outright, that's another issue altogether.
For sure, the Colts aren't keeping him around. This is just one big awkward dance to find a way to cut him and the $28M bonus without taking a black eye from the fans. Irsay really, REALLY wanted him to retire and save him from this.
I imagine this ends one of two ways. Manning fails physical with Colts; retires. Manning never takes the physical or the results never go public; Manning and Colts "mutually part ways" and he signs with another team.
like emjohn said, it's kind of a grey area when you're talking about nerves and such. It's definitely a PR war though, and more than likely it will end in the "mutual parting of ways" like you mentioned.
The only thing that is clear at this point is that this whole saga is not going to end well. Irsay is ready to move on and at this point, it doesn't sound like Peyton is all that interested in sticking around Indy.
big picture: i have a difficult time believing a guy who needed his spine fused together will play NFL football again.
Probably bad if it's unilaterally done by the team, but Jerry Glanville tried to get Steve Tasker to do it to block his trade to the Bills.
Does anyone else see Brett Favre 2.0 coming? I'm willing to bet Manning spends the next 2-3 off-seasons mulling retirement, all while ESPN follows him around with helicopters and news vans as if he's the President. I, for one, CAN'T WAIT!
He's never suggested he might retire - in fact, he's done the exact opposite. Everyone else is suggesting he retire. That's the exact opposite of Favre.
The only way I'd compare him to Favre so far is his "I'm just trying to be low key" announcements he made about 489 times last week.
The colts beat writer was on espn yesterday and predicted he would wind up in Miami. I don't know why he would want to go there. Seems like he would want to go to the team with the best chance of winning.
Miami has a solid D, solid pieces on offense, would let him run whatever he wants, and spending flexibility.
