The end is never easy
Legendary Giants quarterback and Super Bowl XXI MVP shares his thoughts on Big Blue’s QB change. As told to Steve Serby:
Ihave thought about Eli Manning today, just knowing what he’s going through, his family and himself. I know it’s very tough.
It’s a terrible day for him. For me, it happened during an offseason. For Eli, it’s happening during the season. So he’s going to be on the sidelines in practice and around all the time, and then also, he’s going to have to be ready to play and not get down — just because you know how NFL football is, with what we saw this past weekend (injuries to Ben Roethlisberger and Drew Brees). There’s still a pretty good chance he’ll play again this year, so he’ll have to stay ready.
It’s gonna be very hard emotionally for him, and rightly so, but I think he’s been in the league long enough to know that you never know. It could be this week.
I can relate to what Eli is going through — every player in the league can. Not just quarterbacks or ex-Giants or Giants. I know coaches, who are 70 years old, that go, “Why are you still doing it?” and they all say the same thing: “Man, there’s nothing like running out on a field on a Sunday.” You can’t get enough of those moments.
There’s Peyton Manning, with all his great success and tremendous career. Do you think he wanted to walk away? Why would any of us? You walk away because of injury when you know you can’t compete. Being in Eli’s shoes makes it harder, because he’s still physically healthy, and thinks and knows he can still play.
Eve n after Pat Shurmur opened the door to a change on Monday, I still thought Eli would start against Tampa Bay. We can come up with a hundred reasons why they could have and we could come up with just about as many why they probably should have kept Eli in there, too. There’s no perfect time.
But what a career Eli has had. So many achievements, never missing a game, those are memories he’ll keep forever, as I have learned as time has gone on and I appreciate ’em more and more as I get older.
Aside from the Super Bowls, I think of him beating the Cowboys on the road in the playoffs, and Brett Favre in the cold in Green Bay, and the beating he took like an old-style quarterback and beat the 49ers in the 2011 NFC Championship game in San Francisco. When he had a chance to win the game in these big games, he did.
He’s either the greatest actor in the world or just his mentality just to keep doing what he does every day. He never got emotional about it. Winning, losing, he just kept practicing and playing. That in itself is pretty amazing, no matter what market you’re in, to answer questions and not have a moment where you just kind of snap back or complain about the question. He never did.
Daniel Jones has handled everything great. He’s shown he’s very accurate with the football, can get rid of it. Very good decision-maker. It’ll be interesting to see as a fan how they use him and see if I see a big difference in how they run the offense and play-calling with him in there than they did with Eli. Jones won’t recognize the game he’s going to play in this weekend compared to what he did in the preseason. It’s bigger, faster, rougher, more complicated.
I don’t know if I have advice for him. It’s the game of football, and I can just promise him this, we all know this: It’s gonna be fun, it’s gonna be hard, there’s gonna be tremendous adversity.