Two of the greatest quarterbacks of all-time, Tom Brady (Source: Greg M. Cooper/USA Today Sports and Peyton Manning (Source: USATSI), have had major off the field problems arise before the Super Bowl
The conference championships have come and gone and there are only two teams left standing. The National Football Conference champion is the Carolina Panthers, a team that has constantly been derided by critics as being the “worst 15-1 team ever,” despite facing 18 opponents and, other than the Week 16 loss in Atlanta, have beaten all of those teams. Star quarterback Cam Newton, the assumed Most Valuable Player of the league, has been facing criticism over his “controversial” celebrations after scoring touchdowns, most notably this mother, who has an interesting way of expressing her opinions on Newton. The constant questions regarding the legitimacy of how good the Panthers are has suddenly shifted to presumptions that they will dominate Super Bowl 50 due to their American Football Conference opponent. That would be the Denver Broncos.
The Broncos have definitely had a season that can be described as a roller coaster ride. Quarterback Peyton Manning, the longtime golden boy of the National Football League, endured possibly the toughest season of his 18-year NFL career. His 2015 campaign featured him throwing only nine touchdowns versus 17 interceptions, easily the worst TD-INT ratio of his career, as well as a completion percentage of 59.8% and 2,249 passing yards, the lowest totals since his rookie year back in 1998. His Week 10 performance against the Kansas City Chiefs was the cherry on the awful sundae as Peyton became the 67th quarterback in NFL history to post a quarterback rating of 0.0 in a game. He went 5-20 passing, with no touchdowns, four interceptions and a measly 35 yards to his credit. A performance so unlike Peyton led to a move that was equally unprecedented: head coach Gary Kubiak benched Manning in favor of the younger Brock Osweiler.
Backup quarterback Brock Osweiler took Peyton Manning’s starting job only to see Manning take it right back (Source: Chris Humphreys, USA TODAY Sports)
Osweiler, a product of Arizona State, has been with Denver since 2012 and has been learning under Manning. So, it was natural that Osweiler filled in nicely for Manning, going 5-2 in seven games started, including a Week 12 overtime thriller over the New England Patriots. He made everybody start to wonder whether that Kansas City performance would be the last NFL snaps Peyton Manning would ever take. Then, the Broncos five turnovers in the regular season finale against the San Diego Chargers and, to provide a spark, Osweiler was benched and Manning entered an NFL game for the first time as a backup and led the Broncos to a victory and the #1 seed in the AFC. Victories over the Pittsburgh Steelers and the aforementioned Patriots have gotten the Broncos to Super Bowl 50 and the biggest storyline of them all has arisen: will this be Peyton Manning’s final hurrah? If he wins, he could have a chance to go out on top, just like Denver general manager and former QB John Elway, who won back-to-back Super Bowls with the Broncos and promptly retired after the second.
However, there is one major dark cloud looming over the impending Super Bowl festivities, one that the NFL can hardly afford right now. The Al Jazeera report of Manning’s wife receiving a shipment of human growth hormone back in 2011 has raised questions about both the material covered in the report and its authenticity. While the unexpected brilliance Manning had following his 2011 neck surgery, his record breaking 2013 campaign the biggest example, is suspect for a QB in his late 30s, the fact that the lead pharmacist in the Al Jazeera investigation, Charlie Sly, has been backpedaling like no tomorrow, it seems like Manning’s claims of the report being “utter garbage” are pretty accurate.
Chances are you probably saw references to Deflategate like this one last year (Source: Nate Beeler, The Columbus Dispatch)
The main problem with this whole saga is the NFL itself. Remember last year and the whole Deflategate controversy involving the Patriots? The minute that story broke, the amount of media coverage was painfully endless to the point where it felt every single minute ESPN programming began, 85% was focused solely on Deflategate. It dragged on and on, months after the Patriots’ victory in Super Bowl XLIX last February and, while we still have no definite answer to the controversy, coverage has died down significantly since then. If the Patriots were AFC champions, then it might be a different story, so that is something to be happy about. Despite all that, the NFL was vicious in their investigation of the Patriots organization and Tom Brady, yet only on January 27 did the NFL officially announce they will begin investigating Al Jazeera’s claims. We can only wonder whether it will be an intense investigation akin to Deflategate or along the lines of the Ray Rice controversy, which was deemed as a pathetic attempt at handling the seriousness of domestic violence. The added fact that Major League Baseball and the United States Anti-Doping Agency are working together to see whether Ryan Howard of the Philadelphia Phillies and Ryan Zimmerman of the Washington Nationals did receive banned substances like the Al Jazeera report mentioned and the NFL is not taking the same measures makes you wonder whether the NFL front office takes the report seriously.
The best reason why the media stuck with the Deflategate story? Everyone hates success. You ask a common fan of a sport which teams are the most hated and typically the same answers always come up. Baseball has the New York Yankees, football has the Dallas Cowboys, basketball has the Los Angeles Lakers, and hockey has the Montreal Canadiens. Then, there are the teams that recently spring into the pantheon of hated teams, simply because of their success. The Seattle Seahawks have started to experience success with Russell Wilson and Pete Carroll, so the rest of the NFL fanbases are not too thrilled with that. The San Francisco Giants went from the team that has never won a World Series since leaving New York to winning three World Series in a five year span and consistent winning is never a good thing to other fans. Back when LeBron James, Dwyane Wade, and Chris Bosh were together, the Miami Heat were easily the most reviled team due to the sudden increase of Heat fans that were probably only LeBron fans. The Boston Bruins have skyrocketed to the most hated NHL teams due to both their Stanley Cup victory in 2011 which caused the Vancouver riots and the constant accusations of dirty play. The talks of a New England dynasty, coupled with the notable postseason failures of Manning, could be the reason why HGHgate could be swept under the rug while Deflategate was all over the place.
Do I personally believe the Al Jazeera report? No. Are these claims reported by Al Jazeera true? That is a question that we have no definitive answer to as of yet, but it is another off the field story that may be a major talking points in the days before the biggest Super Bowl in NFL history from a marketing standpoint. The Golden Super Bowl held in the Golden State is led by the golden boy of the league in Peyton Manning, who could provide a storybook ending to a Hall of Fame career. Yet, this report should be a bigger deal to most because, despite Charlie Sly’s backpedaling, it could have serious implications on how we view Peyton Manning’s tenure as a Denver Bronco if Al Jazeera was proven correct in their findings. If deflated footballs deserved that much attention, taking performance-enhancing drugs should get the same amount, if not more.
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