Last night, at the onset of Thursday Night Football, Saturday Edition, the world collectively took a huge gasp together. Peyton Manning used PEDs in 2011. Without hesitation, the internet blew up, spreading this claim worldwide so every sports fan would know that Manning, Julius Peppers, Ryan Howard and Ryan Zimmerman were all cheaters.

Let’s just slow our roll shall we?

Here’s the short end of a long story. Al Jazeera television sent Liam Collins — you know THE acclaimed undercover investigator Liam Collins – on a super secret mission to uncover the spreading use of PED use in sports across the globe. This is where it gets foggy.

Apparently, Collins is a former British hurdler who went to several PED factories and said he was trying to get back to the 2016 Olympics, so he wanted to know all about PED use. This is where he met Charlie Sly, who told him while at the Guyer Institute in 2011 he sold Delta-2 to Ryan Howard and Ryan Zimmerman. Delta-2 is a drug that helps PEDs go undetected.

There is also video evidence of Taylor Teagarden admitting to PED use.

Taylor Teagarden? If anything, this video should be shown worldwide to show how PEDs don’t have any effect on players. This is a guy who had 21 career home runs over an eight-year career as a sparingly used backup catcher. Huh?

Anyway, hours later, Zimmerman and Howard’s lawyers threatened to sue:

“It’s inexcusable and irresponsible that Al Jazeera would provide a platform and broadcast outright lies about Mr. Howard and Mr. Zimmerman. The extraordinarily reckless claims made against our clients in this report are completely false and rely on a source who has already recanted his claims.  We will go to court to hold Al Jazeera and other responsible parties accountable for smearing our clients’ good names (MLB Trade Rumors).”

Shortly after that we found out that Sly backed down on his statements.

 Sly himself told Al-Jazeera that his prior statements (or, at least, the characterization of them) were “absolutely false and incorrect.”  Sly added that the recordings were made “without [his] knowledge or consent.”  In comments made to ESPN, Sly says he was a student intern at the Guyer Institute in 2013, rather than 2o11 as alleged by Al Jazeera.  Sly told ESPN he was “trying to pull one over on Collins to see if he had any idea of what he was talking about,” dropping names of athletes who were not actually clients (MLB Trade Rumors).

How quickly this spiraled out of control, ay? Ryan Howard was a beast of a baseball player. Ryan Zimmerman was an oft injured slugger often getting cortisone shots to speed up his return. Peyton Manning nearly broke all the nerves in his neck and was told he was never going to play again.

And right now, they are all a shell of their former selves. They are easy targets and huge names in their sports.

Am I saying that it’s not true? I have no idea. The sporting world in which we live make it highly likely that they took something. Manning had major neck surgery for crying out loud. People quickly forget that steroids are an actual drug with a true medical purpose for some people. I would imagine that while someone is recovering from a major neck operation that yes, he was probably given some medically cleared steroid to help him gain control of his body. Is it approved by the NFL? Who knows, but that’s another can of worms.

All I’m saying is that it seems like there are different angles to this story, so before we go ahead an take every record Manning set these past two seasons and throw them out the window along with his Hall of Fame candidacy, let’s wait and see what transpires.