Pumps up Giants with emotional pregame speech

THERE was something different about Eli Manning on Sunday.

The Giants quarterback received a rousing ovation from his teammates when Ben McAdoo brought him into the center of the locker room after a 12-9 overtime victory over the Chiefs.

Manning did not particularly do anything extraordinary in the game, throwing for 205 yards and no touchdowns in his 209th consecutive start — surpassing his brother Peyton — so why did his teammates react the way they did?

“Pregame, he gave a fiery speech that got everybody riled up,” running back Orleans Darkwa said on a conference call Monday.

“Eli is the heartbeat of our team . . . To have a guy like that, whose been through so much, got those two Super Bowl rings, we follow him, we follow his footsteps,” Darkwa added. “To have him come up there, it shows the weight that he carries on the team and he’s definitely up for it.”

Manning, 36, is in uncharted territory this season, navigating his way through a 2-8 season that has been plagued by injuries, calls for the head coach to be fired and for Manning’s successor to be picked.

GM Jerry Reese was even reportedly at the UCLA-USC game on Saturday to scout quarterbacks Sam Darnold and Josh Rosen.

Perhaps that had nothing to do with Manning’s pregame speech, but Darkwa said this was different from anything else he had ever heard from his quarterback.

“He talks to us a lot, but the difference yesterday is you can sense the fire in his voice,” Darkwa said.

Manning even mentioned after the game that the team discussed earlier in the week that it was important to keep the energy up.

“It’s easy to start before the game but before the second half, third quarter, celebrate the stops, get the offense going, communicate a little bit more,” Manning said. “Just keep the excitement going and take that the whole game.”

It certainly sounded like Manning set the tone prior to kickoff, and while Darkwa did not reveal what his quarterback said, he lauded Manning’s leadership and added that it does not need to be a weekly occurrence.

“At the end of the day, Eli is gonna be Eli,” Darkwa said. “He shouldn’t change the way he commands the room, way he talks to us. That’s how he is, that is the way he leads us. If the Super Bowl rings don’t hold any weight I don’t know what else should. You got to be able to follow a guy like that and listen to what he says.” It was not just Manning, either. McAdoo appeared more animated than usual on the sideline, firing off at officials and motivating his players.

“He’s always like that,” defensive tackle Damon Harrison said. “I’m just guessing you guys just finally got a glimpse of it, but he’s animated a lot of the times. Maybe a little more yesterday because we had a lot of positive things going, which we haven’t had much of this year. So, I feel, yeah, you can say that.”