Bill Polian said on SiriusXM radio that Manning could fit Philbin's offense

[KB21]

Interesting...never heard such a detailed description of his surgery and the effects. Assuming that the nerve is eventually going to 'wake up', how long would an appropriate estimate be of how long he will be able to perform until the increased stress requires another surgery? Are you insinuating that sometime within his next 3 years of play he will need another surgery while on the roster? That being the case I can't imagine how it hasn't been discussed, and how the demand for signing him is still so high.....that would just about remove one year of play from his potential remaining 3 years wouldn't it?

There has already been some talk about Peyton already looking at potentially a 5th surgery to remove the bone spurs that have formed on the vertebra above the fused vertebra since the last surgery. Don Banks talked about this in an article about one month ago.

Here's the thing with Peyton. He has a lot of confounding issues that may not make him such a great candidate to meet the average return to play standards of this injury. I read a retrospective cohort study last night on NFL players who had cervical disc herniation. This study had 99 players in it. Of those 99, 53 had either an anterior cervical fusion or a posterior foraminotomy to relieve the pressure on the nerve. Of those 53, 72% returned to the field to play again. This 72% that played again played on average 29 games over a 2.8 year period. Age was a negative predictor of career longetivity following surgery. What that means is that the older the player was, the less likely he would play for very long after the surgery.

With Peyton, there are some confounding variables. The anterior fusion was not his first surgery. It was at least his 3rd, and possibly his 4th surgery. He had 2-3 surgeries prior to this anterior fusion procedure. My guess is, he had posterior foraminotomies in an attempt to relieve the pressure on the nerve. There have also been reports of bone spur formation in the past, as I believe his first surgery was to remove bone spurs to open up the neuroforamen. This was in 2010. The first symptom he had was in 2006, when he may have been a victim of Gregg Williams and his bounties.

In my mind, Peyton's age, multiple surgeries, length of symptomatology, and possible co morbid neck conditions significantly decrease the probability tha the will play another 2-3 years. It will not surprise me to see Peyton struggle through one season with inconsistent arm strength and endurance problems, and ultimately retire after a season.