The Indianapolis Colts have announced that quarterback Peyton Manning has had surgery to relieve pain in his neck caused by a pinched nerve.
“This condition has existed intermittently for the past four years, but at no time did it interfere with his training, practice or playing regimen,” the team said in a release. “While it never has affected Peyton’s activity on or off the field, the Colts’ medical staff, after post-playoff examination, thought it best to resolve the situation now.”
In other words, Manning has had an injury that the Colts claim really isn’t an injury, in order to prevent an accusation that they were covering up his injury.
Really, if the thing has never affected him “on or off the field,” why in the hell was did they cut him open? And why did they announce it to the world when they have no requirement to say anything about injuries until the Wednesday before Week One of the 2010 season?
Here’s why. If this news had leaked without the Colts getting in front of it, the obvious reaction (by pains in the ass like me) would have been that the Colts had failed to disclose the injury.
And just because the Colts say it never affected Manning doesn’t mean they’re telling the truth. We’re far more inclined to defer to common sense on this one, and to conclude that, at times, Peyton has been experiencing pain in his neck during the football season, that he has always found a way to play through it, and that nevertheless the condition should have been disclosed at some point in the last four years.