Cry me a Rivers! Philip feels for Eli
The strongest Wednesday player reaction to Eli Manning’s benching came not from the Giants’ locker room but from the Chargers’ Philip Rivers, who called the Giants’ benching and handling of Manning “pathetic.”
“I honestly thought it was pathetic, really,” Rivers told reporters in Costa Mesa, Calif., after practice. “The guy, he’s been out there 210 straight games with no telling how many bumps and bruises and injuries for his team. Won two Super Bowls, MVPs, the respect he’s had in the locker room over the years, really the respect he’s gained throughout the league. You feel like the guy’s earned the opportunity — if in fact they are deciding in fact to go in another direction — you feel like he’s earned the opportunity to finish it off, finish off these last five weeks.
“I know they haven’t had the season they want,” Rivers added. “Shoot, they’ve had a lot of their guys hurt. I just thought it was too bad the way it was handled and then certainly Eli, we’re not close buddies, but as a friend, as a fellow quarterback, it was tough to watch him yesterday. You can only imagine how he felt.”
Rivers and Manning are forever linked by the 2004 draft day blockbuster trade that sent Manning, San Diego’s No. 1 overall pick, to the Giants, in exchange for Rivers (whom the Giants had taken at four) and draft picks.
No one in the Giants’ locker room ripped the organization. But Justin Pugh, the fifth-longesttenured Giant, might have been the player most visibly shaken the past two days by Manning’s benching and subsequent appearance with the scout team on Wednesday.
“Obviously it lets you know that no one’s untouchable, because if anyone is untouchable it’d be Eli Manning,” said Pugh, still out with a back injury as he approaches free agency. “I used to say I’ve seen it all. But now I’ve seen it all.”
A day later, some of the Giants’ bigger names had time to process the blow of seeing Manning sent to the sidelines and were genuine about how “shocked” they were, in Pugh’s words.
Jason Pierre-Paul, who won a Super Bowl in 2011 with Manning, had been irreverently yucking it up not 10 feet away from a tearful Manning on Tuesday in an unforgettably unfortunate scene. But Pierre-Paul was cryptic Wednesday about his feelings on Manning being benched, intimating he wasn’t on board and saying Ben McAdoo had not told the team why it was happening.
“Eli is a good person, he’s a good quarterback. It was a decision that was made,” Pierre-Paul said. “A lot of people would disagree with it, and you see what I see. So there really isn’t too much to talk about.”
Second-year wide receiver Sterling Shepard went as far as saying that just because Manning was benched didn’t mean he wouldn’t seek the QB’s advice constantly. He reveres him.
“He’s been a huge mentor for me,” Shepard said. “There’s no better mentor than him. He’s a two-time Super Bowl champion and has been in the league for a long time. He definitely knows what he sees and is one of the smartest players I’ve ever played with. So I’m still going to him. No matter what the situation is, I’m still going to go to him for advice.”
In other words, the shockwaves unmistakably are rippling through the locker room, hitting everyone differently, but hitting them just the same.