The Los Angeles Rams Should Avoid Peyton Manning

While the state of Peyton Manning’s career at the moment isn’t known for sure, the soon to be 40-year-old quarterback is a popular choice to continue his career with the Los Angeles Rams, but that doesn’t mean that should come to fruition.

Assuming the surefire Hall-of-famer decides not to hang up his cleats this off-season, Manning will be entering his 19th season under center. Two of which ended entirely or were shortened because of injury due to neck and spinal fusion surgery and by a bout of plantar fasciitis among other injuries in 2011 and 2014 respectively.

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Tuesday, ESPN’s Adam Schefter reported exactly that after being asked when Manning will announce his retirement on ESPN’s Mike & Mike.

"He’d like to keep playing. In a perfect world, he’d like to keep playing. The question is who’s going to give him an opportunity. And it’s tough to identify that team right now that’s willing to sign him to the deal that makes it worthwhile for him, that allows him to continue playing.Does he want to go move to another city? Because I think everybody at this point accepts and understands that he’s not going to be back in Denver. So the question is where does he go and play. It’s not going to be the Houston Texans. It’s probably not going to be the Los Angeles Rams. So you go find a team that would be willing to sign him."

All this despite coming off of the worst year of his career and disturbing allegations brought forth by the controversial figure, Shaun King of the New York Daily News. Not including 2011, Manning didn’t start 16 of 16 games for the first time in his career, starting 10 while playing in just nine, recording or matching career lows in nearly every major statistical category. He tossed a measly nine touchdowns to 17 interceptions while accumulating a mere 2,249 yards at an underwhelming 6.8 average and a 67.9 quarterback rating.

And while Schefter may not believe Manning will don the horns come week one of 2016, according to multiple NFL insiders and league sources, the Rams are an extremely likely possibility.

While many would argue making a move for Manning would be a grand entrance in the Rams return to southern California, it would be a crippling move in respect to the future success of the franchise. While the team has a massive amount of cap space, it would be wise not to go about spending it freely, the last time that was the thought process, the team ended up with Jared Cook and Jake Long.

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Despite last year’s struggles, Manning would still command a massive price tag for his services which have long eroded away. The team would be better off strutting out Manning’s current back-up, Brock Osweiler, come week one, than Manning himself.

Unfortunately, the current Rams regime has attempted to usher another veteran quarterback, Brett Favre into putting on the blue and gold as recently as 2013, a whole three years after he, for what has so far been the last time, retired. And with Case Keenum returning as incumbent, it’s understandably tempting to go for a player of Manning’s stature. Fisher and company should by all means resist that temptation, as bringing Manning on board would be no better than when the team signed a broken down Joe Namath in 1977.

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Peyton Manning no doubt is one of the best signal-callers of not only this generation, but in the history of the NFL, but like that of a poorly made movie re-make, it’s time to make an end to his career.