As the old football maxim goes, “the quarterback gets too much praise when things go well and too much blame when things don’t go well.” This has pretty much been the general consensus of Eli Manning’s career, where he has about the same amount of highs as he does the lowest of lows.
Now it appears that Eli Manning’s 2013 season was the proverbial “final straw” and has sounded an alarm for some within the organization. Every thing that could go wrong did, and it has now lead to questions about whether the longtime franchise quarterback has finally reached as far as he can go after his horrendous 18-touchdown, 27-interception disaster.
In a surprisingly revealing piece from ESPN’s Dan Graziano, the Giants seem to be getting a sudden case case of wandering eyes concerning their quarterback. The Giants selected Ryan Nassib in last year’s draft because they felt he had a chance of potentially being the next guy four or five years down the line; Manning’s durability will likely never be up for debate. But privately, Giants were wondering if they even want Manning coming into 2015. The team’s reluctance to extend Manning’s contract to alleviate the initial salary cap strain was telling.
It will be interesting to see if Manning is reinvigorated under new offensive-coordinator Ben McAdoo’s system. Maybe it was a case of even a Manning family member falling into the all-too-human trap of going though the motions, where he found himself now uninspired by an offense in which he knows every page of the Gilbride playbook and can recite it in his sleep. Couple that with a sieve of an offensive line in which no quarterback could have succeeded behind, it’s highly possible that it just wasn’t going to work last year. It’s hard to win a game in the NFL when all the pieces are in place and everything is clicking. It’s a miracle that the Giants actually found themselves in shouting distance of the playoff picture after starting 0-6.
Yes, Eli Manning was bad and it is irrefutable. But it was him and Victor Cruz and occasionally Rueben Randle. There was really no one else. Presumed long-term left tackle Will Beatty got paid and had seemingly turned himself into a matador; Hakeem Nicks was looking for his own big payday and was determined to sandbag the season to do it (ironically, he still didn’t get the big money he sought and settled with the Colts); the running game came mostly went and Brandon Jacobs had his last hurrah in Chicago; Brandon Myers was a rumored whiner in the locker room with a significant case of the dropsies; and the defense was awful until the trade for Jon Beason happened and he stabilized a group that had no clue. There was a lot of stuff that was bad last year. It wasn’t just the quarterback.
I guess it’s only natural for this who run the team to wish that Eli would be more like Drew Brees, or Aaron Rodgers, or, yes, even his brother. (Why people are still making that comparison is ridiculous, but I digress.) They make it look effortless, but seemingly omitting that those guys are in the perfectly-crafted offenses suited to their strengths. After ten years under Kevin Gilbride’s updated version of his run-and-shoot offense, I’m still not sure it works. Want proof? The Oilers had those prolific offensive numbers under Gilbride with Warren Moon at the controls and they didn’t get the job done.
Eli Manning’s not going to be those guys. He’s more akin to Brett Favre; he will have his moments of brilliance. He will also have the moments that make you peek through your fingers expecting the worst. And he still wins more often than not. There was a time where that was all that mattered. Nowadays, in the age of sports analytics and even fantasy sports, the scoreboard doesn’t even completely win anymore. The two championships–one more than each of what those previously mentioned quarterbacks have, by the way–has apparently lost the luster. It’s all about the numbers in how player gets to the benchmarks.
There was a reason why former GM Ernie Accorsi traded for him: Because he felt Manning could win championships. And he’s done that. Twice.
The Giants appear to now be to be looking past all of that. They are already wondering about what life will be like with someone like Jameis Winston being the new chapter of Giants lore. You can argue that football’s evolution to the more otherworldly athletic quarterback could be the driving force behind looking for someone else while your current quarterback is still in his prime, but it still doesn’t sit right.
But in the cutthroat pressure-cooker that is the National Football League, loyalty only takes you as far as a team wants it to. What appeared as nearly improbable even just last week suddenly feels real. While the two Lombardi trophies that Manning literally had a hand in bringing to the team is suddenly seeming like they’re rusting and disintegrating right before his very eyes.
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