There have been few-more polarizing players in the history of New York Giant football – and maybe the NFL in general – than Eli Manning. Here’s a rational look at the current situation surrounding him.
I feel like I need to (but shouldn’t need to) preface this by saying that Eli Manning is my favorite athlete of all time – any team, any sport. I’m 29-years-old and the joy I was able to get during my late high school and college (in Patriot country, no less) years – mostly due to Eli- were my most memorable moments as a sports fan in my entire life. I’ll never forget them.
Eli was obviously at the fore-front of them. I’ll likely never get two-better moments than Super Bowls 42 and 46, and I’m perfectly fine with that. This man has been my quarterback for basically all of my developmental life, and I’m going to be extremely sad when he finally hangs it up. Eli can do no wrong in my eyes in terms of having me ever feel any-less about him than I do. The epitome of toughness, accountability and raising your game to the highest-level at the most crucial times, Eli Manning should command the respect of any real Giant fan for the rest of his life.
Having said all of that, these last few years have been very hard for me. I’ve constantly flip-flopped back-and-forth between feeling like Eli is still the answer for us, and feeling like the game has passed him by. Considered blasphemy in the political world, I call this readjusting to the information at hand when it comes to sports – or just about anything else.
Do Eli’s Super Bowl triumphs guarantee him a right to be our signal-caller until he feels ready to hang up the spikes? Do those two trophies trump the overall well-being of the franchise, while being paid incredibly-well to do so? My short answer to those questions – after a lot of thought- is no. I’ve made my position known on how Eli has extracted every-possible dollar he could from Big Blue, and we can certainly have a reasonable conversation on whether that was the right thing to do or not – Tom Brady and the class of the NFL, the New England Patriots, think not (Eli is the highest-paid NFL player of all-time).
Over the last two years, the question of Eli being the right man for the job has gotten very murky. Surely, Jerry Reese deprived him of any-semblance of an offensive line over the better part of the last-five seasons. However, he was blessed with one of the very-best skill position groups in the NFL, and we constantly are seeing other quarterbacks find a way to not just survive, but flourish, behind woeful offensive line groups. If everything needs to be perfect for a quarterback to succeed, is he really the right quarterback, then?
As Dan Duggan of The Athletic showed in his reasonable tweets last night, it’s considered blasphemy for any New York Giant reporter or journalist to even broach the subject of Eli being ‘over the hill’. Duggan’s video tweet of an extremely-pivotal moment (if you can have a pivotal moment in a 35-17 drubbing) is sure to get a rise out of Big Blue faithful, even though he was just showing a play that has been so-typical of Eli over the past few seasons. Here’s the tweet:
Going to tweet this one clip and then headed to bed (mentions should be a delight in the morning): Here's the grounding play. Eli rolls out and is looking directly at an open Tomlinson ... and just doesn't pull the trigger pic.twitter.com/fV9iTNlqON
— Dan Duggan (@DDuggan21) September 10, 2019
I’m sure people reading this are already fired-up at me for even bringing it up, but any rational person can see that this is a throw we see just-about every other NFL QB make with ease. Sure, you can pull up plays for any QB that you could say the same about (including Patrick Mahommes’ wild miss-fire to Travis Kelce in the end zone Sunday), but anyone who really watches this team knows this is all-too common. There’s also a legit-case to be made that this was not intentional grounding – and believe me I was screaming that in real time – but, it should have never even come to that.
Now, in absolutely no-way am I putting that pathetic loss on Eli Manning. The Big Blue defense was beaten so-badly that I’m not sure there is a quarterback in the league that could have won that game. However, we need to be putting our organization in the best position possible going forward – is that really trotting a 38-year-old Eli Manning out there every Sunday (at a 23 million-dollar cap number that could have been easily gotten-out-from-under on)? His inability – or unwillingness- to even attempt to drive the ball down field is a recipe for disaster in today’s NFL.
Again, it’s a question that I’ve struggled mightily with over the last two years. It’s a question that I’ve seen the Giant fans I respect the most on both sides of the spectrum of. At this point, after seeing just how bad this defense is, and just how uninspiring our skill position players are compared to the rest of the league, I’m closer to feeling like I know the answer than ever before.
Even still, as a fan that wants to see this win at-all-times, I sill feel like Eli has some good football left in him in the right situation. I badly wanted that situation to be this 2019 Giant team, it just doesn’t seem to be the case. However, when Dave Gettleman decided he was bringing Eli Manning back for 2019, he made the most rational decision to be having Eli play to attempt to see if this team was good enough to win.
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I’m still there now – I think Eli should be the starter on Sunday. One concession I’ve recently made though, is that instead of Eli playing until we’re mathematically-eliminated from playoff contention, maybe Daniel Jones should get a look much sooner than that. If this team is 1-3, or 0-4 — as it very-well seems like it could be — should a Daniel Jones, that lit up the world in pre-season play after being selected sixth overall, really be sitting on the bench?
I’m sorry (kind of…) if it offends anyone, but I really don’t think so. We’ve invested too-much in ‘Danny Dimes’, and already wasted too-much time pretending we could compete over the last two-years to keep on losing ground. The people upstairs need to make a decision on where they think this team is right now, and fast. The main aspect of that decision will undoubtedly be the quarterback situation.
So hate me if you want to – I’m already used to it for not being so-vanilla all the time. You’re bound to upset people in this business, especially passionate fans. But just know, coming to this mindset was not easy for me. I feel like I’ve taken the appropriate amount of time, and put the right amount of thought into it. I’m also not putting this laughable last-few years all on Eli.
It is surely difficult to watch your favorite player go out like this, even if he was involved in the decision to do so, but I’m tired of being the laughing stock of the NFL – I’m sure you all are to. If we want to really do what’s best for this team, it might come at the expense of not doing what’s best for our franchise icon.
I’ve made peace with that now, have you?