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…
? Why is it that while he's playing the media says he needs to retire then when he retires "he still can play" https://t.co/o5dexqOSI2 — DeAngelo Williams (@DeAngeloRB) March 7, 2016
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…
Not sure if that's even an advantage if you physically can't get the ball there but I'm just a fan of the game
https://t.co/dqrLBCJw1n — DeAngelo Williams (@DeAngeloRB) March 7, 2016
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.
Yes 2010 jimmy is better than 2015 Peyton manning (the panthers didn't have the defense Peyton had) https://t.co/c8CZN81O9d
— DeAngelo Williams (@DeAngeloRB) March 7, 2016
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.
Look Peyton is a hall of fame qb who couldn't play dead in a western last year but career over all is astonishing but last year was
— DeAngelo Williams (@DeAngeloRB) March 7, 2016
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?