You have to closely examine what Bill Polian said. There's too much synopsis going on, the "basically what he was saying was..." stuff is over-generalized and in some cases inaccurate. What Polian actually said was that he's not sure he wants to see Peyton getting in ball games behind this patchwork, injury depleted offensive line.
And that's a whole different animal from all these "I think he said..." recaps I keep hearing. Yeah, I wouldn't want to put Peyton behind a line featuring Jeff Linkenbach at LT, and guys like Quinn Ojinnaka, Seth Olsen and Mike Tepper as the other starters aside from Jeff Saturday. I'd be pretty apprehensive about that as well.
But is that going to be the OL situation for the rest of the year? No. Absolutely not.
Anthony Castonzo has already returned to practice. If he doesn't play this week against the Falcons, he'll be resuming his Left Tackle spot soon. That will allow them to move Jeff Linkenbach to Right Tackle where they originally liked and wanted him. Ryan Diem was questionable for the game against Tennessee. If he's not back for the Falcons game, he'll also be back pretty soon. Joe Reitz' situation is a little more unclear as he has arthroscopic surgery on October 25th, but they made the decision not to put him on injured reserve, so they must think he'll be back this year. So you'll have all these guys back, along with Jeff Saturday at Center and Jeff Linkenbach whom they like at Right Tackle. When that happens, suddenly the reason Polian didn't want Peyton to come into the games will have disappeared.
I absolutely guarantee that Peyton Manning wants no part of Andrew Luck and will do everything in his power to make sure Luck does not become an Indianapolis Colt. Lucas Oil Stadium is the house that Peyton built. The Colts have no business drafting an Andrew Luck less than a year after re-signing Peyton Manning to the deal they signed him to.
