Originally posted by OnTheClock:
With our OL? No one's THAT quick. Releasing the ball means nothing -- that doesn't mean they won't get hit. Smith is hit almost twice as often as he is sacked.
Manning is a future hall of famer, but you guys are overrating his release. He's played behind great OL's for years. He was not sacked more than 16 times, a league low, the past two seasons. Even without him, the Colts are still tied for 14th in the NFL with only 29 sacks, and this is with them passing CONSTANTLY because they are ALWAYS behind (see 0-13 record 
), so they're still in the top half of the league, probably even better considering how much they have to pass. A quicker release will decrease sack totals marginally, but not as substantially as some are suggesting.
You're going to have to weigh in the factor that Manning is pretty much stone-legged at this point in his career and not going to be able to escape the pocket and run for yardage like a mobile QB would. In the end, the sack total improvement some here are suggesting is laughable.
It's not just the release, Peyton just gets rid of the ball a lot faster, and often his throws get to his receivers right as they come out of their breaks, meaning he throws his passes earlier than Alex Smith would. Everytime I watched the Colts play the last few years (which were a lot given all the national attn), Peyton would get the ball out so quick it boggled my mind. The only time he would get sacked was when there was immediate pressure up the middle. Often times Peyton would just throw the ball away just when the rusher got to him. That's something I've never seen Alex do except when he rolls out right and throws out of bounds.
I have no idea what you're talking about with your latest post as well regarding sack totals. The Colts have given up far more sacks without Peyton under center. Peyton's O-line was pretty terrible last year, esp in run blocking, but they had issues in pass pro as well that even a blind man could see, yet they only gave up 16 sacks all season. This year they've given up 29 sacks in 13 games which averages to 36 sacks in a full season. That's over twice as many sacks.
Come on, your analysis is just lazy and speculative. Terrible QB's like Painter/Orlovsky are getting sacked less than Alex... so therefore it's obviously the O-Line's fault?? I haven't seen much of the Colts this year, but give me better reasoning. Painter/Orlovsky might be worse than Alex, but that doesn't mean they have a worse propensity for taking sacks.
EDIT: Oh yeah, and if you account for number of attempts when comparing the poo-poo platter of Collins/Painter/Orlovsky to Peyton, the poo-poo platter took 29 sacks in 436 attempts... 29/436 = 6.65% sack rate, whereas Peyton took 16 sacks in 679 attempts!!! That's a sack rate of 2.36%!!! (not perfect calculations, since sack rate is actually based on dropbacks rather than attempts, but a pretty good approximation nonetheless)
So Peyton actually takes 3 times fewer sacks... that's huge!
[ Edited by dhp318 on Dec 15, 2011 at 1:29 PM ]
With our OL? No one's THAT quick. Releasing the ball means nothing -- that doesn't mean they won't get hit. Smith is hit almost twice as often as he is sacked. 
), so they're still in the top half of the league, probably even better considering how much they have to pass. A quicker release will decrease sack totals marginally, but not as substantially as some are suggesting.