I know he's always thrown ducks, but the end of the Dallas game and almost the entirety of this game something seemed...off. Not only did he not seem as comfortable throwing the deep to immediate pass, the balls had no velocity behind them and were very often under-thrown. His ducks in the past were assuredely ugly, but most of the time they
got there.
Not only that, but the play calling and reliance upon Moreno that we haven't seen in previous games only reinforced my belief that something may be wrong with either his neck or arm. In the first five games they came out guns blazing and didn't really look to the run unless the situation called for it or they had a comfortable lead. There were check downs and runs galore, when in the past that wouldn't have been the play. Considering they were behind for most of the game and never had a sizable lead, it seemed off.
It's amazing he came away with the stats he did IMHO, and it's only because they turned out that way that people aren't talking about this more. I guess a 75% Manning is better than most.
Manning's entire season has been checkdowns. The deep pass has been largely absent from his game, and if it seems like he threw a lot more bad deep passes than usual against Indy, that's because he threw a lot more deep passes PERIOD than usual. Demaryius Thomas, in particular, probably came close to doubling his number of targets 20+ yards down the field for the season.
Manning definitely looked like the situation and the pass rush were both in his head last night, but I also think that over a small sample size you're going to get a lot of variance. Sometimes that variance is good and you throw 7 TDs. Sometimes that variance is bad and... well, you still throw 3 TDs. I would be a lot more concerned with Manning today if he hadn't come out on fire in the fourth quarter and moved the ball at will (at least, when Hillman wasn't fumbling it and JT wasn't getting used as a turnstile). As it stands, yesterday's game reminds me a lot more of Atlanta/New England/Houston/San Diego last year, where Manning suffered some really bad stretches early and turned on the jets late.
All in all, I view it as something to watch going forward, but not yet a serious cause for concern. Another week or two of this level of play, and absolutely I'm going to be worried.