Is Eli Manning No Longer Elite After Not Making NFL’s Top 100 and PFF’s Top 101 Lists?
Eli Manning put up some of the best stats of his career in 2015, but failed to make the NFL’s Top 100 and Pro Football Focus’ Top 101. Is he no longer elite because of Ben McAdoo’s offensive scheme and Odell Beckham’s superstardom?
Four years ago, the New York Giants won their second Super Bowl in five seasons, again defeating the New England Patriots, a juggernaut led by the hooded genius Bill Belichick and 2-time NFL MVP and 3-time Super Bowl champ Tom Brady.
Record-setting postseason
The New York Giants, a 9-7 wildcard team, had again upset the football world, trouncing the Falcons at home and the Packers in Lambeau, and upsetting the 49ers in Candlestick in a game for the ages.
The self-proclaimed “elite” quarterback leading his team to win after win was Eli Manning, a Super Bowl MVP that still had to answer questions about his ability and received eye rolls when anything other than mediocre came out of his mouth. This second Super Bowl, perhaps even more impressive than the one in 2007, not only offered the nation a view into the play of Eli Manning, but proved every pundit and naysayer wrong that still questioned the ability, tenacity, and winning mentality of the younger Manning.
Armed with the 25th ranked defense in the NFL, an undrafted playmaker at wide receiver, and a starting running back with a fractured bone in his foot, Eli led his team to two crucial wins in December, an easy victory over Atlanta in the wild card round, a hard fought but decidedly easy win over the 15-1 and defending Super Bowl champion Green Bay Packers, and a San Francisco team at the beginning of a 3 year conference title game stretch boasting possibly the most intimidating defense of the past 10 years. All the while, he racked up 1219 yards during the post season, the most all-time in one post season run, and putting up the most prolific regular season of any quarterback in history.
His 4,933 passing yards during the regular season is the most of any Super Bowl winner in history, and firmly puts to rest the idea that Eli rode his defense to the title in 2011; not to mention the other record he broke during the 2011 season, touchdown passes in the fourth quarter, a record that had stood for decades and had been held by a pretty well-known quarterback named Johnny Unitas. Not only was he snubbed for league MVP that year, he defeated the MVP that year who himself was coming off his lone Super Bowl victory. He rallied a team around him, put the team on his right arm, and led them to another Super Bowl Championship.
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This is all distant memory now, not only to Giants fans, but the football world in general, who again regard Eli’s success as the product of the system he is in, while at the same time directing a vast majority of the blame towards him when his underwhelming team cannot win games.
Yes, he is the veteran leader of his team, and, yes, he has led the league in interceptions 3 times, but the New York Giants are not the team they are right now, or a four time Super Bowl winning organization without Eli Manning, and that is the mark of a truly elite player.
Eli is looked to when the time comes to win games, and time and again he has put his team in position to win games, only to have a consistently mediocre defense lose the game. Eli’s recent success, namely 8,500 yards, and more than 60 TD passes in the last two seasons, is more than enough to validate him as a top 5 quarterback, and top 20 player in this league, but again fans, and the football community in general have designated this as a product of his system and the emergence of Odell Beckham.
Never in this discussion is Odell’s success attributed to the guy throwing him the ball, it is always Eli’s success attributed to Odell. He was an elite player in 2008 when he led the team to a 12-4 record and first round bye and a legitimate chance to repeat as Super Bowl champs, but an ill placed gun in the drawers of Plaxico Burress all but derailed that prospect.
Eli was again elite in 2015, when he tied for second in the league in TD passes and 6th in yards, and yet he was an alternate at the Pro Bowl and left off the end of the year top 100 list of the NFL Network and Pro Football Focus’ top 101 players.
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The value of competent, steady quarterback play has never been more clear than in today’s pass first NFL, and yet the most competent and steady quarterback in the league, not to mention 2-time Super Bowl MVP, is still disregarded by fans and experts alike as a middle tier quarterback that needs pieces around him to succeed. And yet, the Tom Bradys, Peyton Mannings and Drew Brees’ of the world never seem be held to this same standard, never wholly represented as the product of the system they were in and are always said to make the pieces around them better.
Whereas Eli needs the pieces to make him better, these other elite quarterbacks make those pieces perform at a higher level. But where is Eli’s Hall of Fame counterpart? Aside from Odell Beckham, a still raw, unpolished, and markedly immature player, what pieces has Eli had on his side of the ball that are of Hall of Fame caliber?
Tiki Barber (maybe) for all of two miserable years, where the disgruntled running back could not stand his domineering head coach, let alone the baby faced quarterback trying to lead the team. No 1,000 catch receiver, no dominant tight end, and no steady running back.
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Just off the top of my head, all the other “elite” quarterbacks listed had some immense talent to play with: Randy Moss, Wes Welker (both Brady and Peyton), Dallas Clark, Jimmy Graham, Rob Gronkowski, Marques Colston, Marvin Harrison, Reggie Wayne, Corey Dillon, and Edgerrin James. All Hall of Fame/ All-Pro level players that would have been successful with or without their quarterback, while Eli has managed Super Bowl victories with Mario Manningham, Jake Ballard, Kevin Boss, Steve Smith (the other one), Hakeem Nicks, and Bear Pascoe catching TD passes. Not one of these players is close to the consistently high performing players that Peyton, Brady, Brees, even Ben Roethlisberger and Philip Rivers have had to play with during their careers.
Eli is often still seen as inferior to all these quarterbacks, as evidenced by his absence from numerous top 100 lists and his overall persona as a klutz who got lucky in a few games. But, luck can’t attribute to 8 postseason wins, 2 Super Bowl MVPs and more than 180 consecutive starts.
Another sporadic quarterback who led the league in interceptions three separate years, won a Super Bowl, and also had the privilege of being outplayed by Eli in the postseason? Brett Favre, and yet Favre is often considered a top 5 QB of all time, if only because of the gaudy numbers accumulated over nearly two decades of playing and a few league MVP awards.
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Eli’s reputation is what is, just as Favre’s is, but when evaluating a player, and judging them according to a few concrete stats, the actual ability of the player is overlooked, as is the ability to win games despite the circumstances. Eli will never be regarded in the same class as his brother, Brady, Favre, or Brees, but when his career does end, and he stands in the top 10 in nearly every significant passing category, people are going to look back and wonder how they ever saw anything other than an elite quarterback.