Broncos, Peyton Manning put Bleacher Report on blast
The Denver Broncos and quarterback Peyton Manning squashed a report from Bleacher Report that Manning would ride the pine the rest of the 2015 season.
Bleacher Report’s Jason Cole has made plenty of headlines in the last year, but he apparently now has the scoop to top all scoops as we head toward the home stretch of the NFL season.
According to Cole, Peyton Manning will be benched for the rest of 2015 in favor of Brock Osweiler.
Cole cited ‘sources’ within the Broncos’ organization and even went so far as to say that the team will ‘move on’ from Peyton Manning at this time. According to his report, if Osweiler ‘struggles significantly’, he could be replaced again by Manning.
The Denver Broncos responded, and called out Bleacher Report specifically from the team’s Twitter account.
No decision has been made on our QB situation beyond this week, contrary to speculation from Bleacher Report based on "anonymous sources."
— Denver Broncos (@Broncos) December 2, 2015
Peyton Manning himself, who is out of his cast and getting started on rehabbing his foot, also responded to the report on Wednesday…
The horrible part about all of this is the reality of the situation. Cole’s report about Manning essentially being benched could be completely erroneous, but the rehab for his foot will likely take us right up to the last game or two of the regular season in a best case scenario. Manning’s injury time table might prove long enough to give some credence to Cole’s report, but by no means would the Broncos make any decision like this at this point in the year, because despite how well Osweiler has played, Peyton Manning is still Peyton Manning.
It’s going to be a battle for Manning to get healthy before the playoffs. That seems to be a given at this point. He may have shed his cast on Wednesday, but he’s still in a boot and is going to need to work his way back into football playing shape before he takes over for Brock Osweiler…if that’s the case.
The lesson to be learned in all of this is not to call attention to something you have no business calling attention to. The Broncos have been pretty transparent about Manning’s injury, and it’s pretty easy to look online and find a realistic timetable for recovering from such an injury.
In all likelihood, we could very well see Brock Osweiler the rest of the year, but that doesn’t mean that Jason Cole is right for reporting what he did.
We may never actually know.