A commonly held belief in recent years is that New York Giants quarterback Eli Manning had essentially fallen off a cliff, seen his skills rapidly deteriorate and become a liability that co-owner John Mara was forcing on general manager Dave Gettleman and head coach Pat Shurmur.
Of course, both Gettleman and Shurmur had raved about Manning and were keen on sticking with him until they realized following Week 2 that they couldn’t really compete during a rebuild. As a result, they ushered in the Daniel Jones era.
But was there more to it than that? Did Manning’s teammates essentially fold when realizing the two-time Super Bowl MVP would again be under center in 2019? ESPN’s Jordan Ranaan certainly thinks so.
“There was just no reason to bring [Eli] back, especially once you drafted Daniel Jones. You’re much better off having Ryan Fitzpatrick — or whatever other quarterback — that you know you’re bringing in, you’re not paying a lot of money, you’re putting him as a starter if you wanna wait on Daniel Jones, which they did, and then whenever you want to make that move, it’s a move you can make easily and save money,” Ranaan said on the Breaking Big Blue podcast.
“It also dragged along a situation that was hanging over the team. The whole Eli situation was hanging over the team. He was in decline, the offense wasn’t playing well for the last two-three years and they keep bringing him back. It’s sort of demoralizing to the guys on the team. Trust me, they sit there and tell you, ‘We back Eli, we back Eli.’ I know behind the scenes there were a lot of guys who were like, ‘Man, I can’t believe we’re going back with Eli again.'”
If what Ranaan suggests is true, Manning’s teammates went to great lengths to cover up their alleged disdain over his return, voting him a team captain for the 13th consecutive season, which is extremely sketchy and somewhat disrespectful for a franchise great and future Hall of Famer.
Ironically, if the Giants players were concerned that Manning was holding them back, 2019 has served as a brutal dose of reality because the offense is actually performing at a lower clip than it had under Manning in 2018 while the same problems that have plagued the team for years continue to persist.
It becomes easy to find and continue to point at a scapegoat — even if they are doing it quietly behind the scenes instead of like men face-to-face — but if we’ve learned any one thing this season, it’s that Manning was absolutely not the root cause of Big Blue’s problems and made the team no worse (or better) than it is now.
Manning certainly deserves better than he’s gotten from both the team and media, and apparently he also deserves better than he’s gotten from his teammates who talk trash about him from the shadows.
The Giants organization has fallen hard and it’s fallen fast, and based on Ranaan’s reporting, the culture has completely deteriorated.
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