It started with a simple tweet from Tom James: “Colts QB Peyton Manning and Arizona WR Larry Fitzgerald expected to have dinner this week in Indy.”
In the age of social media you knew it was only time until someone saw Larry Fitzgerald, one of if not the premier receiver in the NFL, and Peyton Manning, soon to be the most decorated free agent in NFL history, were seen having a passing glance.
Never mind that this is a common occurrence for Fitz as Kent Somers reports on Twitter: “Doesn’t surprise that Fitz would have dinner with Peyton. Told me once he had almost every NFL star in his contacts, not Tom Brady, tho”
This is different, because you know they are having dinner, and that means we can all speculate exactly what they will be talking about… Right?
Or maybe they are just having dinner as peers and Larry is just going to ask him and find out his interest, if any, in playing in the desert.
You see Larry isn’t secretive, when he sees a player he wants he lets management know about it.
Does he have the authority to do that? I would say so, only because the franchise has made him the highest paid player in its long and mostly frugal history. So if you are going to pay him that much money you should probably listen if he thinks the signing of Peyton Manning and the subsequent getting rid of last year’s Flavor of the Off Season in Kevin Kolb.
The conundrum becomes simple though: Is Peyton Manning going to show enough by Mar 17th for the Cardinals to feel comfortable and make him an offer, sign him and release Kevin Kolb before his $7million bonus is due?
I don’t think so, you are talking the Cardinals brass has to see enough to show them that Manning is worth the $10-12 million a year he is going to command or risk signing another QB to a big deal and getting nothing out of him
If Manning is able to show in workouts that he is fine, I have no problem with going after him and releasing Kolb, who had a disappointing, to say the least, 2011 season. But, if Manning isn’t healthy are Cardinals fans, myself included, really ready for the John Skelton era to start?
The smart money is on the Cardinals heading into training camp with the same QB depth chart at 1 and 2 as 2011.
The fan in all of us would love to see #18 out there.
I’m going to side with my fan for now, even though common sense tells me otherwise. Hell what’s the reason of being a fan if all your doing is using common sense.
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