SI's Peter King decided to dedicate the first page of his MMQB article to the possibility that Peyton Manning will not start opening day against the Bears. He cites WebMD.com medical analysis on bursa sacs, quotes players, picks Tony Dungy's brain, and even has Bill Polian breakdown exactly the reasons for the surgery. Make no mistake, the whole article is about how Peyton Manning may not start against the Bears to open Lucas Oil Stadium.

Then, after much of this analysis, Peter King says this:

It is one of the cloudiest injuries in sports. I am writing about it because I think there's a chance -- oh, maybe a 30, 35 percent chance if I had to guess -- that the removal of the infected bursa sac could prevent Manning from playing in the Colts' opening game against Chicago Sept. 7. Would I bet on it? Not a chance.

Um, OK. If you think that there is maybe a 30% chance that he won't play, and you wouldn't even lay a bet on it WHY WOULD YOU WRITE AN ARTICLE ABOUT THE POSSIBILITY?

If there were, maybe, a 50/50 chance I could see the need for such an article. But the facts are that Manning is on schedule (he's on Week 4 of his recovery, not Week 5 as King states in the article), and will likely see some playing time in the final pre-season game in roughly 2 weeks. Literally everything about his recovery has been documented, from the surgery to his arrival in Terre Haute to the fact he is lifting weights and conditioning.

So, what's so "cloudy" about the injury?

Hell, in the article Bill Polian practically performed the damn procedure on King (and probably should have) when he explained the details of everything. Add to this the fact that rookie TE Tom Santi had the exact same procedure, but roughly two weeks prior. Santi is now running, conditioning, and could see playing time either this wek or next.

Listen, despite the hopes of many an AFC South team and the Bears, Peyton Manning will start Week One. It's a given. Write it down. It's about as automatic as it gets. Peter King knows this, and in a pathetic, half-assed way acknowledged it. If Peyton Manning doesn't start Kickoff Weekend, buy a lotto ticket because something is screwed up in the space-time continuum. I could understand King's article if it were one week to the season and we still have not seen Peyton in a uniform, but right now, this article's intention is to do nothing but scare Colts fans and drum up hits for King's site.

In short, it's a hack piece with very little substance, and Peter King is paid a lot of money to write SUBSTANTIVE stuff, not crap like this.

UPDATE: 18 to 88 agrees:

If you read what King wrote, he doesn't have any reason to assume he'll miss the game either, he just wanted an alarmist headline. Peter! I heard Brett Favre just took a crap! You'd better go analyze it!

By the way, Tom Brady has yet to play in the preseason either. Maybe his foot was amputated!