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The name Eli Manning stirs up impassioned debate on both the pro- and anti-Eli side. We have been experiencing that for 11 years here. It isn’t only fans and bloggers, though. It’s NFL analysts, players, and former players, too. Take, for the example, the absolute annihilation of Manning from former New York Jet Damien Woody on Wednesday.
Via NJ.com, this is how Woody, who played in the NFL for 2 seasons, finished the statement “Eli Manning is ...” during an appearance on ESPN’s “Get Up.”
“Toast. He is toast, OK? Listen, everyone has talked about the offensive line. I mean, I live in the New York tri-state area. You hear it all the time. ‘The Giants offensive line is trash.’ Which they are. They’re bad. They’re bad. There’s no question about that. But there’s been one constant with the Giants. They’ve had change at GM. They’ve had change at the head coaching position. They signed Odell Beckham. They drafted a running back. But there’s been one constant, and that’s the quarterback, OK? Eli Manning.
“I understand he won two Super Bowls. I get it, OK? But nobody cares about that. We’re not talking about legacy here. What was that, back in like 2011? Dude, that’s like eons ago, OK? We’re talking about right here, right now.
”When you look at Eli Manning and that Giants offense, he needs like the perfect storm. He needs everything, the environment, perfect. He needs the protection to be perfect.
”He has the weapons. He has the running back. All those things. But that’s not the nature of the National Football League. There’s going to be times when you need to make plays off platform, off schedule. That’s what the really good quarterbacks do.”
Shurmur: Remember 2007 Giants
Pat Shurmur wasn’t a member of the Giants coaching staff in 2007, but he remembers what happened to the Giants that season. Asked a question Wednesday about Manning, he said:
“I can remember, I remember this in Philly, I think it was the 2007 season. I can remember seeing the back page of one of the newspapers and it was a split shot of Eli and Tom Coughlin, and it was “Will They Survive?” Then, low and behold, they won a Super Bowl,” Shurmur said. “Now, that doesn’t say what’s going to happen, but you just have to play it out and keep playing. That’s the important piece. That’s, I think, what we as competitors embrace. If this was easy, everybody could do it. Unfortunately, it didn’t go the way we wanted the first two games, but we just get back to work and try to put it all on the table for Houston.”
Saquon Barkley: This isn’t Penn State anymore
One thing rookie running back Saquon Barkleys is learning is that the NFL season is a looooong one. One of the lessons of that long season is that while losing is never fun or acceptable, a couple of losses don’t completely destroy a season in the NFL.
“In college if you lose two games, your season is completely over. You won’t even get a chance to play in the Big Ten championship game. You can’t be like, ’Oh it’s another loss, we’ll get them at the end of the year, or we’ll do this at the end of the year.‘ You can’t have that mindset, but you also have the mindset that it’s a long season, it’s a long grind,” Barkley said. “It’s a lot of vets on this team and a lot of pros on this team that’s been doing it for a long time. I continue to talk to them, or they keep telling me to stay with it, stick with the process, keep working, you won’t play your best ball (until) towards the end of the season. It’s literally like, once you get one win, it can start clicking for you and everything can turn around in the season. So, we have to continue to have that mindset to continue to work and continue to get better.”
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