New York Giants: 10 worst moves of Dave Gettleman era

9. Bringing back Eli Manning in 2019

The decline of Eli Manning over the better part of the last five seasons has been tough to watch for any New York Giant fan. In the grand scheme of the NFL, we were the last ones to really admit what was going on, and you can’t really blame us, as Eli has been such a legendary player and person for this franchise.

However, by the end of 2018, it was as clear as day to anyone that Eli Manning was done as a winning starting quarterback in this league – well, to anyone but Dave Gettleman, that is. Gettleman was graced with the opportunity to get out from under Eli’s contract in 2019, only being guaranteed to pay him 6M$. Instead, he didn’t even broach the idea of Manning taking a pay cut, and brought him back for 23M$.

To make this move even worse, he ended up taking Daniel Jones with the sixth-overall pick in the 2019 draft anyway, further muddying the waters. Any reasonable executive would have seen before the off-season that this team was far away, and bringing back a 38-year-old expensive QB made little sense.

It apparently took until draft night for Gettleman to realize this, so while you can give him a credit for picking Jones (who I love), you’ve got to take some of that away when you assess the route he took to get there.