Offensively Carolina is the biggest challenge, defensively it's a toss up, i would have said the Bronco's but i have serious questions about Manning's ankle and how it is going to effect him going forward, so with that in mind i will say that the Saints were the biggest challenge for their defense.
Watching the neverending "analysis" about Manning and his injury problems i felt like they were all missing the key point. While pretty much all of the talking heads I saw were saying that Manning's injury won't be that big a deal because he was never a mobile QB, I think the real point is that his arm strength is a fraction of what it once was and not being able to really plant and push off is going to make it much worse. While he is still as smart as they come at QB and still incredibly precise and accurate, he has nothing on those throws, he is tossing duck after duck after duck, and if he has to rely solely upon his arm strength to carry him the rest of the way when he can't push off he is going to be in big trouble. It would be one thing if he could simply wing it without having to use his lower body but he can't, and while i felt like it would take some wind and bad weather to cause him real problems now I think that it won't even take that much, and he is going to have one of the worst stretches of his career over the course of the rest of this season. We'll see if he can successfully play through this but I seriously doubt it.
