Adam Teicher, Chiefs beat reporter for the Kansas City Star, just threw a big bucket of ice-water on the Peyton Manning brush fire sweeping across Chiefs Nation.
Teicher is reporting that not only have the Chiefs not offered Manning a contract, they haven’t done much more than express their interest to his agent.
I’m a lot more discriminating about this stuff, though. I gave up on Santa a few years back and I gave up on this report on Manning as soon as it hit my computer screen.
The Chiefs not only haven’t offered Manning a contract, they’ve barely done anything other than contact his agent to say, ‘Hey, we’d like to be in the game.’
There is no real way for us to know just how linked in Teicher is these days. Presumably he has some contacts within in the organization but as you know, the Chiefs haven’t been overly forthcoming with the media since Scott Pioli came to town. Pioli thinks the media is a distraction and as far as he is concerned, the less they know, the better.
The interesting thing here is that nobody REALLY seems to know what is going on with this Manning thing. There haven’t been any concrete reports of workouts or visits that I’ve seen. Most folks expect Manning to make a decision pretty quickly, however nobody seems to have a bead on how the decision making process is being approached. Not Adam Schefter, not Jason La Canfora, and not Adam Teicher.
The thing to remember here is that if the Chiefs are pursuing Manning hard, the news isn’t likely to come from the Chiefs themselves. As we’ve been saying for days, Pioli will keep things as quiet as possible until the absolute last second.
But nobody can say for any certainty that the Chiefs haven’t secretly had more conversations with Manning or his people. I’m not sure that anyone outside of the Chiefs or Manning’s agent can even say for certainty that the Chiefs haven’t offered a contract. Manning is one of the biggest free agents in the history of sports. I’d be willing to bet there are more than a few contract offers on the table right now, whatever teams might have you believe.
Panning for Manning continues. The excitement is warranted but I think Teicher is right to tell us to temper our expectations. Even if KC is pursuing Manning hard, they still have a ton of competition.