The Peyton Manning sweepstakes is going to be the biggest story of the NFL off-season — as if the league needed any more to talk about. Manning will likely be leaving the Colts and if the future Hall of Famer can get a clean bill of health, which is a major concern, then teams should be scrambling to try to get him to sign as a free agent. The Kansas City Chiefs should at least be one of those, despite their lack of public interest.
Joel Thorman covers every possible option in a column at SB Nation today and says the Chiefs would be interesting because of the pieces already in place.
He writes, “This makes some sense. The Chiefs sure sound like they’re content with Matt Cassel and ready to keep him but he’s been inconsistent in his career. The Chiefs have a lot of weapons offensively, including Jamaal Charles, so Manning would make this team a contender right away. You can’t cross KC off the list but publicly they’ve given no indication they’re serious about Manning.”
Scott Pioli is certainly not a GM who will tip his hand, so it’s not surprising that the Chiefs aren’t positioning themselves like a Miami Dolphins or even Washington Redskins. That said, the team has come out and displayed public interest in creating “competition” at the position. Typically that’s taken to mean something less than bringing in an automatic starter at the position more akin to a Kyle Orton than Peyton Manning. But breaking down such language for over-analysis likely won’t yield anything important in the end.
Clearly the Chiefs are well-positioned for some quarterback to succeed if the team can keep Dwayne Bowe and the others like Charles and Tony Moeaki can come back healthy. The question is whether Manning wants to come to KC.