Unlike start, Eli’s ending not on own terms

Eli Manning had good reason to be offended by Ben McAdoo’s poorly-presented Monday proposal that Manning would play only in Sunday’s first half in Oakland. But overlooked in co-owner John Mara’s Wednesday explanation of the organization’s botched benching of Manning was a key, meaningful detail for Manning’s legacy: After sleeping on the news, Eli hadn’t just told the Giants Tuesday morning that he would rather not play at all; Manning also had told the Giants that he wanted the team to put out a statement announcing what they’d done. Essentially, Manning told Mara he wanted Jerry Reese and McAdoo to put their money where their mouths were and to stop pretending like this was something other than a benching of the best quarterback in their franchise’s history.

“And he also wanted us to put out a statement announcing that,” Mara said. “So that’s what we did.”

That was the genesis of the 3:25 p.m. Giants press release sent on Tuesday that carried the title “Geno Smith to Start at QB on Sunday,” featuring quotes from Manning, McAdoo and, tellingly, Reese (Manning wanted the typically unaccountable GM to put his words on paper).

And yet, now Manning’s two-time Super Bowl winning NFL career awkwardly is bookended by two demands or mandates that matters transpire on his terms and his alone. And it just has a regrettable look.

In 2004 to start his NFL career, the Mannings famously told the Chargers not to draft Eli No. 1 overall or he would sit out the season and enter the 2005 draft, orchestrating his trade to the Giants after San Diego took him.

Now on Tuesday, Manning essentially concluded his Giants career similarly, with the type of demand that could be seen as

kicking and screaming instead of playing the part of dutiful employee — and a well-compensated one, at that.

He did, after all, have the opportunity to keep playing in games and declined. Mara should have known Manning wouldn’t have gone for a planned benching just to keep his start streak alive, but you can’t blame the owner completely for being stunned that he didn’t want to play at all.

This is not to say Manning wasn’t justified in being upset, hurt, pained and offended by the Giants’ callous handling of the situa- tion. He was understandably stunned — as were the fans and former players and everyone in the NFL community and media, myself included — at how badly the Giants hung him out to dry.

It’s just that Manning has it pretty good. He has $184 million career earnings according to Overthecap.com, he’s still healthy, and

he’s built the type of NFL career most people only dream of.

So it was refreshing to hear Justin Pugh, a teammate who sympathized greatly with Manning on Wednesday, put in solid perspective that it is far from just Manning who has to deal with moving on. And it usually happens sooner.

“It’s tough to see anybody go through that,” Pugh said. “Eli’s is just put out there in front of millions and millions of people, and it’s tough to see. But just know, there’s guys every week, every year, that get told their career’s over and they never even get a shot to go out there and go. So the NFL is no joke, and (Tuesday) we found out even more so why.”

Manning also has to be honest to himself about his performance, though he probably forever will be as stunned as everyone else that he was benched by the Giants before his poor left tackle Ereck Flowers was.

Manning, though, hasn’t played well. On Thanksgiving in Washington, he made one decision to throw to a covered receiver that literally made one member of the Giants front office stand up out of his chair.

Manning also missed Shane Vereen on what could have been a touchdown, this on top of a killer red-zone fumble in San Francisco, on top of missing a wide-open Sterling Shepard against the Rams.

Due to Manning’s poor play and his high $22.2 million salary cap hit for 2018, the Giants moving on from Manning this offseason always was a strong possibility. Due to McAdoo’s youth and Reese’s desire to keep his own job, the coach and GM no doubt were on high alert for the moment to move on to a younger quarterback in order to restart the clock on their own futures — though that ship probably has sailed given the dysfunction of this season and team. They just handled it all wrong. Rookie QB Davis Webb should have been seeing more meaningful work in practice and should have been active weeks ago, at the latest coming out of the Giants’ Week 8 bye.

The games against the Rams and Niners turned out to be blowout losses, and he could have played in real game situations and Geno Smith could have seen more time, too, and the transition would have felt more natural in the context of a forgotten season.

Instead, McAdoo waited and waited and then basically hit Manning over the head with a virtual mallet and said, Geno Time! And Webb isn’t ready yet, because the coach hasn’t gotten him ready yet, and now Manning could be in the uncomfortable position of having to enter Sunday’s game as Smith’s backup in any worst-case scenario.

But here’s the thing: if it comes to that and Manning’s number is called, he will need to go on the field and he will need to play. Twice in his career now, at the beginning and end, he has refused to do so unless it was on his terms. And life just doesn’t always happen that way.