Peyton Manning is retiring from football. Given his long and storied career in the NFL, that has led to an overwhelming amount of positive coverage and remarks from those who have played with and against him, covered him and covered the sport in general over the course of Manning’s career. That response is typical when a surefire Hall of Famer steps away from the game. All of that is great, but DeAngelo Williams is having none of your feel-good Peyton Manning lovefest today.
Williams took to Twitter to unload on Manning, or the people praising Manning. It started off with a reply to a tweet from Pete Prisco of CBS Sports suggesting Manning could still play. That promoted Williams to call out a double standard in the way the media covered Manning this past year, which is probably fair…
Prisco and Williams went back and forth for a while, with Prisco arguing Manning was still ahead of the curve when it came to making decisions before the snap. Of course, Williams had a counter…
Williams was just getting warmed up. Somewhere along the way Williams got caught up comparing Manning of last season to Jimmy Clausen of 2010. This is probably the first time anyone has compared Manning to Clausen in any way possible.
Perhaps the signature tweet of the Twitter rant came later when Williams chose an interesting pair of emojis to put an exclamation point on his overall assessment of Manning.
He’s not exactly wrong, right?
Manning was a shadow of his old self in 2015, nobody would argue that. His 67.9 QB Rating ranked 34th out of 34 qualifying quarterbacks in the 2015 season.
Manning’s career is worthy of the Hall of Fame, despite a down final season. Sure, he goes out a Super Bowl winner (two-time Super Bowl winner actually), and he did so riding the coattails of a fantastic defensive effort by Von Miller and the Broncos defense. There is nothing wrong with that. So really, is Williams out of line for calling like he sees it? After all, don’t most of us see it the same way?