I will definitely agree that cousins had the better overall year last year, but what makes you say that Oz has more upside? He was so bad that he got benched for a QB that had thrown 19 picks in part of a season. The Broncos offense looked better when he was out and the gimp went back in. Brock has shown nothing so far.
The Broncos offense was an interesting contrast between Manning and his backup last year.
With Brock out there, he could make all the throws and things opened up because of that. The problem was, depending on what the defense gave him, Brock looked clueless and slow at times. That 2nd half offense against the Steelers regular season game was pretty embarrassing. Reason being? That's a defense most QBs out of college should be able to pick apart. He's inexperienced so I think he deserves some slack there. Maybe BoB can teach him how to handle certain defenses and speed up his throwing motion and thought process.
Manning was smart enough to defeat defenses and was able to get the ball out fast. The problem was he didn't have the power to make the throws that Oz could. Add in an injury and an old dog new offense and you have embarrassing games like the KC game.
It was basically brains versus brawn, and in the end brains won out when healthy. Not to mention that Kubes benched Oz because he failed as a leader, not because of mediocre performance. In that SD game, Oz played decent enough, but the rest of the O was fucking up. Whereas someone like PM would take control of the offense as a leader, Oz didn't for whatever reason. Kubes said it to Tracy Wolfson at the half, and as a result sat Oz and we all saw that the offense perked up and got it's shit together enough to win the game.
Nobody can argue that benching Oz wasn't the right decision, because it paid off in the form that it did. I like to think Oz could have won a playoff game, but I don't think we would have beat NE without PM at the helm. Same for Carolina.
