(Note from Collin: It would have made just as much sense to title this article 2010 Colts Positional Review: Peyton Manning, because there is not another quarterback on the roster to my knowledge.)

2010 may have proved to be Peyton Manning's most challenging season yet.  The quarterback known for being a perfectionist and relying on route precision and timing was, thanks to a maelstrom of injuries, at times forced to rely on a receiving corps that featured undrafted rookies Brandon James and Blair White, reserve tight end Jacob Tamme, an inconsistent Pierre Garcon and an injured Reggie Wayne.  Throw in an offensive line that only seemed to pass block in spurts and a largely nonexistent running game, and you can certainly understand why Robo-Manning's circuitry was a bit shorted.

Despite those obstacles, though, Manning did still earn a spot in the Pro Bowl and prove himself a legitimate MVP candidate for a healthy stretch of the season.  He did still throw for the second-most yards in the league, tie for the second-most passing touchdowns and claim the 10th-best quarterback rating despite throwing 85 more passes than his nearest top-10 QB rating competitor (Matt Schaub, incidentally, who threw 365 passes to Manning's 450.)  In terms of passes thrown, the only quarterback anywhere near Manning in that statistic was Drew Brees, who launched 448 passes and notched the 12th-best QB rating.

Manning was forced to go to the air often and despite troubling circumstances, and yet I think most would agree that he had a very good year.  It could have been an all-time great year, though, and certainly the most efficient of Manning's career had it not been for a stretch of error-filled, frustrating games.  We'll take a look at those, and how much they affected Manning's season, after the jump.

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A few days ago, we took a look at the wide receiver position.  We continue our look back at the 2010 roster today with a look at the running back corps, a unit whose depth was certainly tested last season.

As much as I'd love to share my thoughts on Joique Bell, we'll primarily concern ourselves with Joseph Addai, Donald Brown, Mike Hart, Dominic Rhodes and Javarris James.  You probably wouldn't have guessed that all five of those players would play significant roles for the Colts heading into last season, and I know you wouldn't have guessed that James would score more touchdowns than any player in that group and as many as Addai and Brown combined.  But then, 2010 was a wacky season, so there were a lot of occurrences that nobody could have predicted.

Like most other positions, injuries were the name of the game in 2010.  Addai spent half the season in the training room due to a serious shoulder injury suffered at Washington, Brown was off-and-on all year with hamstring issues and Hart was effectively lost for the season with an ankle injury in an important home game vs Houston, leaving Rhodes and James as the only players whose seasons weren't adversely-affected by injuries.  Rhodes, of course, was a late season addition, and James was a practice squad call-up.

After the jump, we'll break down each player individually.

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I'm sure it seems like ages since we've run a positional review article (the last one I wrote was published on Valentine's Day), and I apologize to any of our readers who have been wondering where those went.  The 2011 NFL Scouting Combine obviously broke up our coverage a bit as Matt and I dedicated an entire week and some spillover to covering and summarizing that event, and quite honestly I've spent seemingly most of this week on United Airlines, so I'm just now at a point where I can sit down and put some thought into this.

If you recall, we've already looked at the tight end, interior line and tackle positions on the offensive side of the ball.  We now move on to the wide receiver position, which was certainly one of great change and fluctuation during the course of the 2010 NFL regular season.

At some points, the Colts had arguably the most dynamic group of receivers in the league.  At others, players like Chris Brooks and Brandon James were dressed and expected to contribute.  The wide receiver corps eventually settled into a consistent, if not preferable, group of guys suiting up each Sunday, but for most of the 2010 season, fans could never be sure who would be catching passes from Peyton Manning on any given Sunday.  At least from my perspective, the situation was maddening, so predictably awful in misfortune at times that there was nothing else to do but shake your head and offer a defeated laugh.

After the jump, we'll look at each wide receiver who contributed to Indy's 2010 roster.

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I don't know if you watch the Academy Awards or not.  I have been a fan for as long as I can remember.  I have seen about 80% of the Best Picture Winners throughout the years.  I thought this might be a good way to look back at the Colts' season with a new set of glasses.

After the jump I will give out the awards for Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Supporting Actor, Best Original Screenplay, Best Script, Best Animated Short, Best Direction and Best Producer.  Here's what I took each category to mean so you can start thinking.

Best Picture:

This goes to the best game of the season.  I do NOT view this as the best Colts performance.  I'm thinking the one football fans outside of our circle would have stopped what they were doing to watch.  I'm looking for drama and theater.

Best Actor:

This award goes to the best individual performance by a Colts player this season.  A pre-requisite for this award was to win the Sprint Game Ball for the week in question. 

Best Supporting Actor:

This goes to the player with the best Special Teams performance in one game this season.  This would not need to be a Game ball winner, but should be a performance that was from an "unsung Colt."

Best Original Screenplay:

This award would go to a game where the Colts looked MOST like the Colts.  I call this the Do What We Do Award.  Which game did the Colts look like the team they SHOULD have been this year.

Best Script:

For this award, we will look for the best gameplan that the Colts created Offensively or Defensively this season.  I am not looking for best adjustment, but gameplan going into the game.

Best Animated Short:

This goes to the best antics of the season.  This could be a sideline rant, a TD Celebration or a sack dance.

Best Direction:

We ALL know that Peyton Manning is the Director of our offense.  This award is given to his best performance for the year.  It could be statistical or comeback or just outright dominance.

Best Producer:

The Producer for the Colts is Bill Polian so I opted for another route for this award.  This will go to the best draft pick or UDFA from the past off-season.  The person that was not expected to produce and did better than all others.

And the Oscar goes to...

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Now that the season is officially over, and we've had a Football-less Sunday (although College Basketball is filling the void), it's time to look back on 2010 and see how different it was from the previous 9 years.  As most of you know if you've been around the blog long enough, we've based the Winning Stats off of data going all the way back to 2001, so we have a huge sample of data to work with. 

What I want to start with today is a look at the season as a whole for both the Colts, as well as the NFL. I'll look at both the Offense and Defense of the Colts today, and we'll be able to tell exactly what the Colts improved on in 2010 (hint: not much), and how much they regressed (some really bad).  Then tomorrow we'll look at the NFL in general, see how different the numbers are from historical averages, and draw some conclusions about 2010.

Let's get to the numbers...

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Now that we've covered the offensive line (and Eric has mirrored me with the defensive line), let's move on to the tight end position, certainly one of the bigger stories of the 2010 season.

2010 saw Dallas Clark coming off his first-ever Pro Bowl, a record-breaking year...and promptly ending his season on an awkward LaRon Landry tackle six weeks into the season.  A huge question obviously emerged: how would the Colts manage to replace a player like Clark, a player who broke records previously owned by Hall of Fame tight end John Mackey?  How could the Colts possibly move on without Peyton Manning's ultimate safety blanket, the reliable hybrid receiver who has always managed to give defenses fits and force coordinators into more coverage looks than they ever hoped to use?

The Colts answered by turning to Clark's backup, Jacob Tamme.  Whether those questions were answered or not, we'll examine after the jump.

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As this season finally comes to a close, I found myself thinking back over the season.  What were the trends that still stick out in my mind?  Was there something different about this year? The obvious comes to mind right away.  Injuries were in vogue this season.  I cannot remember a season with more games missed by players I saw as critical before the season.  Aside from that, there was another thing that popped into my head.

I feel like our third quarters were REALLY bad this year.  What game was there where we came out of the locker room and dominated?  Did we win any third quarters this year?  Did we put the game away after having a lead at halftime?  Did we close a gap that seemed too big to close?  What great adjustments did we make during a halftime?

For my money, halftime adjustments are where coaches earn their stripes.  During the Dungy years, the Colts were the best in the league at coming out from the halftime break and putting a score on the board to widen the gap or to close the deficit.  I went back through the scoring summaries from 2002-2010 to check it out.  See what I found after the jump.

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We already assessed the offensive tackle position.  Let's move on to the offensive guard position today.  Of course, be sure to read Eric's article on the defensive tackle position first.

I'm going to apologize ahead of time for any overlap.  I wanted to break these articles down into offensive tackle and interior line in order to get more in-depth, but when you have guys like Jeff Linkenbach playing guard and tackle, you're going to run into that problem.  So if any of this sounds familiar, I apologize.

Obviously, a lot of my general sentiments are going to be similar to the offensive tackle position as well.  It wasn't a banner year for the interior line.  That's putting it nicely.  The "musical chairs" game from the coaching position certainly didn't help -- and we'll discuss that more as we continue with this article -- but the production on the interior line was largely underwhelming and contributed to an offensive line that, at its best, was just above-average.

After the jump, more on the interior line position.

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