Kyle Orton: The NFL’s “Inglourious Basterd”

Game Manager. That’s the inglorious term in which Kyle Orton has been dubbed. When did effectively managing the offense become such a bad thing?

Every talking head in the world of sports makes the same point. Get the ball into the hands of your playmakers. Isn’t that what Kyle Orton has been doing throughout this amazing 6-0 Denver Broncos start?

Orton has effectively spread the ball around to his playmakers. Brandon Marshall, Knowshon Moreno, Tony Scheffler, Eddie Royal, and Brandon Stokley are Denver‘s playmakers and Orton has done a fine job of getting the ball to them.

How did “game manager” garner such a negative connotation? Its relatively simple, due in part to effective marketing campaigns, the NFL has promoted the notion that the quarterback should be the flashiest guy on the field (see: Manning, Brady, Romo, etc.) but how often does flash equal results?

Through six games, Orton has thrown for 1,465 yards, nine TDs and only one INT. Keep in mind that one INT was on a halftime Hail Mary jump ball against New England, hardly what I would consider to be poor execution. If you take Orton’s averages through six games and spread it out through a full season, Orton posts an exceptional line of 3,600 yards, 24 TDs and 3 INT.

Orton is a winner, plain and simple. He boasts a 27-12 record as an NFL starter, and won 58 percent of his college starts. I believe you would be hard pressed to find any of the 0-6, 1-5 or 2-4 teams in the NFL that wouldn’t benefit from having Orton under center.

A successful NFL quarterback needs three things in his arsenal. Timing, touch, and accuracy. Orton has displayed all three thus far, couple that with the fact that Josh McDaniels runs a pseudo-spread offense similar to what Orton ran at Purdue and add a dash of veteran moxy and you have a recipe for success.

Kyle Orton is the NFL’s “Inglorious Basterd”, but should he have continued success in Denver, I think you will soon see the phrase “Pro Bowler” associated with one of the NFL’s best game managers.

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