Going on the record about Peyton Manning has become a dangerous game of late.
Bob Kravitz of The Indianapolis Star learned as much this week when he described the Colts quarterback as owning a "noodle arm" in the wake of three neck surgeries.
"It's not even about the $35 million anymore. I mean, the guy's arm is a noodle," Kravitz told "The Tony Kornheiser Show" on WTEM-AM on Tuesday. "He can't throw like an NFL quarterback and, by March 8th, you know, there's no way of knowing if he's going to be ready or not. You've got Andrew Luck to start over, I wish they'd make the decision today or tomorrow and move on with it. Instead, we're just ... we're holding on to something that doesn't really exist."
The subsequent media uproar was dizzying, with "noodle" torching the Twitter landscape for possibly the first time in history, but Kravitz is taking it all back. He told The Star's readers on Friday that he "misspoke," adding: "I do that sometimes on radio, especially when I haven't had my coffee.
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"... I was trying to be funny, flippant, basically saying you don't spend 35 million bucks on a quarterback with a noodle arm. In my head, I was thinking, 'He used to have a laser rocket arm, now it's closer to a noodle arm.' "
Kravitz continued: "In an effort to explain rather than make an excuse, when you do dozens and dozens of interviews over the course of two weeks (something I'm not used to doing), you occasionally say something you wish you hadn't said, or wish you'd said in a different way. I know that in the course of that same interview, I said that my sources said he was throwing 'OK,' but 'noodle arm' understandably has a way of catching people's attention."
Kravitz did not pull back on Tuesday's claims that questions around Manning's future hijacked the week leading up to the Super Bowl.
"I am quite sure he did it deliberately," Kravitz said.
