[DrSpaceman]

Its truly remarkable when you consider :

This would be his second 40 TD season of his career, despite his injury struggles

He had not played in over a year before the season and many were debating if he could even play again last year

The people he has been throwing to this year have been TY Hilton part of the time, a decent TE red zone target in Eric Ebron and then a whole bunch of guys most have never really heard before this year.

There was virtually no run game the first 2/3 of the season

Its a new offensive system with a rookie head coach calling plays

OL has come together lately but was a mess to start the season with injuries

No need to mention the drops so far this year


Contrast that to when manning threw 49 TDs (would have been more) :

Basically three other HOFers on the offense in Wayne, Harrison and Edge, plus had a great 3rd WR in Stokely and a great TE in Dallas Clark. I don't think there is any comparison between the skill position players

Those guys rarely dropped passes

The offensive system had been in place for man years and Manning was perfecting it at the time

He had a center in Saturday and a left tackle in Tarik Glenn that were veterans and he had worked with for years.

The run game had Edge, as mentioned was really solid at the time, play action was huge for that Colts team.

Manning was still healthy, had never had any serious injuries, at least to his arm/neck at the time (I believe he had the jaw injury early on he played threw)


Dungy had already been in place for 3 or 4 years at the time.


To that point in his career Manning had never thrown more than 33 TDs in a season. In fact that was his only 30+ TD season up to that time.

Now Manning had an amazing 9.9% TD pct throwing rate that year and Luck is only at 6.4% this year, but its still amazing what he has done.