My Peyton Manning/Redskins Conundrum

Us Redskins fans have been through this before.  Sign a big money, aging free agent.  The player comes here and sucks total ass.  He doesn't live up to the huge bloated contract he received, eventually gets cut, and we have millions of dollars in dead cap that hamstrings the franchise for years.  In fact, the only aging free agent player I can recall working out over the last decade is London Fletcher.

So everyone is saying Peyton Manning is coming to the Redskins or that the Redskins must sign Peyton Manning if and when the Colts decide to cut ties with him.  But what about his health?

He is 36 years old and has missed a whole year after having surgery to repair a bulging disc in his neck in May of 2011.  After that surgery was deemed "uneventful" he had to have a neck fusion.  Neck fusion does not sound good.

An ESPN article I read states: "An anterior fusion procedure usually involves making an incision in the front of the neck, removing soft disk tissue between the vertebrae and fusing the bones together with a graft."

Ouch.  So that is 3 neck surgeries in under two years according to ESPN (with these two being his second and third).  His prognosis for recovery is "Good".

So reports come out last week that Peyton is throwing, but doesn't look like an NFL quarterback due to nerve damage he may or may have not have suffered.  He looks "noodle-armed" which in football terms means that you throw like a bitch. 

Now before these surgeries, Peyton Manning looked like Peyton Manning.   Can he get back to that?  If he works from now until training camp, will he be ready?  How long will it take?  Can it be done?

We as Redskins fans suffered through the Rex Grossman/John Beck show this past year, and it wasn't pretty.  So bringing in a first ballot Hall of Famer seems like it'd be a no-brainer, as long as he was deemed healthy and could return to his previous form.  And he would have to be on a non-cap-killer, incentive laden contract.

However, he is 36 years old, is as mobile as a statue, and will be playing behind the Redskins O-Line, with the Redskins offensive weapons.

Sounds to me like a recipe for disaster.  So I am officially AGAINST the idea of bringing Peyton Manning to the Redskins.  I would rather draft and develop a young guy.

With that said, I would bring Peyton Manning to be a quarterback of the Redskins if he was on a cheap deal for a year or two (given he's healthy) and to groom Robert Griffin, III.  Draft RG3, and hell yeah he can learn from Manning.

That's the only way I could stomach him being in the burgundy and gold.  Then if he played like shit due to his health, bench his ass and throw RG3 out there.  Then you'd have arguably the best QB ever coaching you from the sidelines.

What do you think?