For the third time in 3 years, the Broncos came up short in the playoffs. This time, they were one and done. Today, they did not look even like they were able to stay with the Colts. By the end of the third quarter. the Broncos looked like a team with little in the way of offensive ideas.
More seriously, Peyton Manning, when he did throw deep, looked horrible. Either he and his receivers had never practiced any deep plays recently, or his accuracy was absent. Balls sailed, floated and wobbled in the air, falling incomplete or landing out of bounds. The only good thing is that none of them were intercepted.
The Broncos loaded up on savvy veteran players at a number of skill positions to complement Manning after they signed him in 2011. The veterans are not getting any younger. The team is in good salary cap shape for 2015 and beyond, but if Peyton does retire, they will probably enter a re-building phase. They may soon be looking for a new offensive co-ordinator. Adam Gase is in demand for head coaching positions at present, so he may be gone from the Broncos soon. (The latest rumour mill is that John Fox may be pre-emptively fired by the Broncos for failure to advance in the playoffs, so that the Broncos can promote Gase to the head coach position to prevent him from leaving). Not only that, but defensive co-ordinator Jack Del Rio is also rumoured to be interviewing for head coaching positions, so if they are unlucky, the Broncos may be looking at a coaching overhaul on both sides of the ball.
Manning’s contract salary in 2015 is $19m, which is top of the line franchise money. The question is whether he can play at that level next season.
People have wondered for years why Manning has such a poor playoff record compared to other top flight quarterbacks. My take on this is that he has a poor record because he commits himself 100% to off-season preparation and work, so that he performs, week in and week out, at an astonishingly high level. The downside is that when you reach the playoffs, Peyton does not suddenly become even better, he is already operating at 100%. Other team QBs raise their game, this is the playoffs, lose and you go home.
The question that only Peyton can answer is whether he can continue to play at a level that meets his own standards next year. If he decides he cannot, I am sure that he will retire. I cannot conceive of an athlete of Manning’s intelligence and integrity phoning it in, hanging around when everybody can see that his skills have diminished.
One aspect that sets most smart athletes apart from the rest is their level of self-awareness. They know when to move on. There is nothing sadder than athletes who suffer from the “one last fight” syndrome that boxers fall into, a script which never ends happily. Not all great athletes are able to let go of course. Jerry Rice played into his 40’s, until he reached the point where Mike Shanahan had to sit him down and inform him that he might not even make the Broncos roster as their #4 wide receiver. Then he finally realized he had to retire. His love for the game overrode any consideration of his level of play. Of course, he might simply have not known what to do after retiring from playing, an affliction that has derailed the lives of many professional athletes. I do not think that Peyton Manning will be short of well-paid things to do after he retires. He is a natural for TV work, and his endorsement portfolio has the revenue stream of a small country.
My $0.02? Sometime in the next 2 months, Peyton Manning will retire from playing.
UPDATE – That was fast…John Fox is leaving as the Broncos head coach, less than 24 hours after the end of the Broncos’ season.…the entire coaching team may be heading in all sorts of different directions over the next few weeks. If coaches suspect that Peyton Manning is retiring, they may not want to wait to see what rebuilding takes place, they may want to stay in control of their destiny and get out ahead of any re-organization.

More controversy, as a pass from Tony Romo to Dez Bryant was declared to be an incompletion after a challenge by Green Bay.
The rule in question has been in place for several years. It always causes trouble for referees and causes angst amongst teams and spectators. However, based on the TV replays and comments from experts, the referees interpreted the rule correctly in this case.
So, the Cowboys run comes to an end. This is merely the beginning of what could be an interesting Spring and Summer for the team. They do have salary cap space for 2015 but may have to get creative to re-sign the marquee players and draft class. Several of their marquee players are free agents, including DeMarco Murray and Dez Bryant. They also currently have no head coach. As I write this, Jason Garrett just became a free agent.

The offensive pass interference non-call in the Cowboys-Lions game is causing much online angst, as many people blame the incident for the Lions’ loss.
First off, we have to gain better perspective. The ultimate bad outcome in a game is where the wrong call (or no call) decides a game on a point-scoring play. This was not a point-scoring play. If the call had been confirmed, the Lions would only have gained a first down. A first down is not points on the board. The Lions might have scored, they might not. Hell, they might have thrown an INT. So claiming that this call decided the game is nonsense.
Secondly, as you can see from the video review, a proper call might well have been offensive pass interference. The Lions player appears to grab the Cowboy player’s facemask earlier in the play. To the people demanding replay for pass interference calls, be careful what you wish for.
Thirdly, this media firestorm would not have occurred if the Lions had scored more points in the second half of the game. They could not score points because the Cowboys defense played better than their offense. When a team resorts to complaining about a single call as being responsible for their defeat, you know you are dealing with a situation where they failed to win the game by on-field play. (I remember after the Giants beat the Patriots in Superbowl XLII, Bill Belichick waved off questions about the David Tyree helmet catch by pointing out that the Patriots were unlikely to win any Superbowl if they only scored 14 points).
Smart players and coaches often point out that single calls are a side issue. Other less smart folks play the “woe is us” card.
Fourthly, the major contributor to issues like this is the NFL rule book, which is hilariously complicated, and continually becomes more complicated. Every year some more subtle caveats and wrinkles are added to the rules, and the job of officiating becomes more and more complex. At the same time, the clamor is for more and more calls to be reviewable, usually after a contentious incident like the Cowboys-Lions incident.
The NFL and its consumers cannot have it both ways. Either the referees are in charge, in which case give them a simpler rule book and rely on them, or the referees are not in charge, in which case let’s make every call on the field of play subject to review. (I’m joking, this latter scenario will never occur, because it would result in games lasting 4+ hours, which the TV networks will not support).
Fifthly – How come the NFL, the most valuable sports league in the world in terms of team values, TV rights and other financial measures, does not have full-time on-field officials? This is crazy. The officials are all doing this work as an adjunct to their day jobs. Think about that for a moment and you will realize that they are being asked to get everything right 100% of the time off of a very complex rule book in front of hundreds of millions of people, in their spare time? How many things are fundamentally wrong with that picture?
Firing officials is often proposed as a sanction for bad calls. Left unexplained is how continual churn of officiating crews is going to improve overall quality of officiating. If you accept that the NFL is the most challenging environment in which to get officiating right (and the poor performance of the replacement officials in the 2012 lockout tends to suggest that), then forced ranking and firing of the bottom tier of officials might make some teams feel better, but it is unlikely to improve the levels of officiating. You have to look at it from the perspective of an official. Why should they volunteer for a part-time job, working in a high-pressure public environment, from which they can potentially be fired for one bad call?
Support for that is coming from within the football commentariat. A contributory factor being cited for Sunday’s issue is that the match referee did not have his normal officiating crew – he was working with a crew assembled just for this playoff game.
(By the way, the NFL has, just like the individual teams and their treatment of the cheerleaders, tried to nickel-and-dime the officials on several different levels, including compensation if the referees are full-time employees. This was one of the issues that led to the 2012 lockout and the replacement officials fiasco. )
My conclusion is that there is a lot of air being moved over this issue, but a lot of the air is carrying hyperbole and BS. The underlying issues are the over-complex NFL rule book, the desire to get every call right that continually expands the reviewable calls list, thus making games even longer, and the chiseling approach of the NFL to referees, whereby they seem to be trying to get high quality officiating on the cheap. In most areas of life, you get what you pay for (or not).