​Situation Impossible: Replacing Peyton Manning

Situation Impossible is a weekly column focusing on the most devastating injury of the week in the NFL. "Next Man Up" is a catchy phrase, but some players are harder to replace than others. Here we investigate the alternatives on hand and how a team reacted or will react to having to replace star-level performance.

Injured player: Peyton Manning, cyborg quarterback that is somehow still operational at 39 years old.

Injury and diagnosis: He's old.

Oh, I probably can't get away with that. Well, the main thing that supposedly bothered him last week was plantar fasciitis and a "slight" tear of the tissue in his foot. Obviously, Manning's rhythm will be off if he can't plant pain-free.

He's also reportedly been dealing with rib pain all season, although an MRI turned up nothing.

Results of the MRI Peyton Manning had on his ribs on Monday were negative, Kubiak said.

— Lindsay Jones (@bylindsayhjones)November 18, 2015

But this is all the Broncos are telling us. Remember, after last offseason Manning revealed that he'd played through a quad tear. He could be dealing with any number of things, including shoulder pain, ennui, or the mumps.

What's missing: Statistically, there's no way to suggest that losing Manning counts as a big deal this season.

Manning has been, by far, the worst starting quarterback in the league. He's thrown 17 interceptions in nine weeks. His DVOA and DYAR scores are worse than any qualifying quarterback—even Nick Foles and Colin Kaepernick, who have both been benched.

Seifert Report video: Defenders blitzed Peyton Manning this year more than they ever, a sure sign of his decline. — Kevin Seifert (@SeifertESPN)November 18, 2015

It is pretty clear that Peyton has regressed significantly. But how much of this performance is signal, and how much is noise? Remember, Peyton was playing with a running game that hasn't gotten on track, and has thrown a ton of passes in a system that he clearly didn't sign up to be a part of.

I am not going to shovel the last bit of dirt on Manning's career yet. I don't think he can be a star at this point, but I think competency could be in the cards if he's surrounded by good talent and put in his preferred system. He never looked comfortable in Gary Kubiak's offense this year and it showed.

(Why on earth was Gary Kubiak able to tell Manning how to play offense, anyway? What track record do we have to suggest that Kubiak's way is better than Manning's?)

What the team will do: Well, Trevor Siemian is your new backup quarterback. The Northwestern star was coming off a torn ACL and wound up making the Broncos out of camp. At Northwestern, he rarely had to take an under-center snap, so he has a bit of a climb to be ready.

But really, we're talking about Brock Osweiler here. The Broncos groomed him for the moment when Manning broke down physically. Here it is.

I've always been lukewarm about Osweiler. The Lewin Career Forecast (as it was called at the time) hated him. The statistics were able to peg his inaccuracy and inability to figure out plays pretty early. Osweiler completed 58.8 percent of his passes in his debut. He was 17-of-30 in backup time before this season. He was below 60 percent in just one of three preseasons, though that hasn't exactly augured well over the years with this type of quarterback.

Osweiler can wing it. He's not cautious. I'm getting a bit of a Zach Mettenberger vibe here, though I do expect him to play better than that. Just keep in mind that developmental quarterbacks without a first-round pedigree aren't really sure-fire stars.

Adjusting our expectations: The Broncos are still in a pretty comfortable spot. Consecutive losses have lowered their playoff chances to 91.6 percent, which is still third-best in the AFC behind the Bengals and Patriots.

We're also coming to a point where even bad Osweiler games aren't necessarily as bad as what Manning was doing. Denver is as imperiled as any 7-2 team I've ever watched. The run game is bad because the offensive line is slapped together due to injuries. The run defense is credible but not special.

And that takes the shine off a pass defense that is simply phenomenal and should be able to stifle most comeback attempts before they start.

With or without Osweiler, I think the offense should improve. "Improve" may be a relative term here, as in "perhaps they can score 24 points a game." But they should be good enough.

I would expect Osweiler to produce statistics that outpace the actual quality of his play, and to take more advantage of the bootlegs and boot-action plays that makes Kubiak's system really shine. Manning couldn't really be counted on to do those things.

But we leave with the idea that the Broncos aren't a top-tier AFC contender unless Manning comes back healthy and starts dealing. They're certainly good enough to win the whole thing, because the defense has the potential to hold teams under 10 points. But without a real offensive focal point, this team is going to struggle against other good (or even adequate) defenses.