THE AVENGER!
Eli leads Giants on Marvelous winning drive to buy some time as starter
SANTA CLARA, Calif. — Before Eli Manning strode to the podium a winner on Monday night, he stood quietly with his back to the room and checked “50-some” congratulatory text messages that had flooded into his phone.
Manning didn’t answer all of them, but one from “the wife” warranted an immediate response.
“I can’t repeat it,” Manning said with a grin of his wife Abby’s message. “But it was a good laugh.”
The many messages of support told the story, though, of just how big a deal it was on Monday for Manning, 37, to lead the Giants on one of his famous two-minute drives for a late game comeback victory, 2723, over the San Francisco 49ers at Levi’s Stadium in mid-November.
Manning wasn’t afraid to say it, either, after completing 6-of-9 passes for 69 yards on the game-winning drive, capped by a 3-yard TD pass to Sterling Shepard with 53 seconds left.
“Wins mean a lot, especially after this season and what we’ve had to go through as a team, what I’ve had to go through, the questions and this and that,” the two-time Super Bowl MVP said. “Just to be able to hey, have a two-minute drive to win a football game. Hopefully we can just focus on some positive things for at least one more week.”
Coach Pat Shurmur had talked with Manning a couple times during the bye week and expressed urgency that the Giants (2-7) and Manning start scoring and winning, or else quarterbacks Alex Tanney and Kyle Lauletta would get their shots.
Manning wasn’t perfect, but he responded to that pressure to produce.
Unsurprisingly, Manning was more effecrecent tive on a night when his offensive line blocked better for him than it had all season in pass protection, thanks to the addition of waiver claim Jamon Brown in his first start.
Manning completed 19-of-31 passes (61.3%) for 188 yards, three TDs and no interceptions for a 110.7 quarterback rating. He hit Odell Beckham Jr. for two scores, matching OBJ’s total through the Giants’ first eight games.
But nothing was bigger for both Manning and the Giants than that final drive and the victory, as evi- denced by center Spencer Pulley’s wild jumping celebration with Shepard.
“I lost my mind. I lost my mind,” Pulley said. “I was just staring at the ref and I was like, ‘You’d better raise your hands right now.’ I ran over there, and I don’t think I got up very high, but mentally I did.”
Rookie running back Saquon Barkley, whose 23-yard catch-and-run combined with two big Evan Engram catches got the Giants down near the goal line, was in awe of Manning, whom he’d watched lead the Giants on memorable late-game drives in his two Super Bowl wins.
“After we went and scored, I came back to the sideline and said to him, ‘Man, you’ve been doing this since I was like 12!’” Barkley said. “That’s Eli. When he’s in one of those moments, he’s a heck of a player.”
And Beckham, a vocal Manning critic earlier this season, said he believed in his quarterback when the Giants got the ball, down three, at their own 25-yard line with 2:46 to play.
“I said what I always say, ‘Take me home, 10,” Beckham said. “It was just time.”
Barkley drew a key holding call on the Niners (2-8) to keep the drive alive, and Manning also got help from the officials on a bail-out pass interference call against San Francisco’s Ahkellow Witherspoon defending Beckham. But Manning made the plays when it mattered.
“I thought that was terrific,” Shurmur said. “I thought he hung in there and made some really good throws and got us in the end zone. It was a winning performance, and he helped us win.”
For those two minutes, Manning put out of his mind all of the doubt in his abilities. But later he was very human in admitting how taxing this season has been on him, facing constant inquiries about whether this is the end and if he is finished.
“It’s more just getting asked about it,” Manning said. “It doesn’t bother me what people say, but just having to answer questions about it, I guess. You just want to go out there and play football. And that’s what I want to do: I want to be with my team and prepare and practice and go play football and get wins and feel good about what we’re doing.”
Manning will not just be with his team Sunday at MetLife Stadium, he will remain the Giants’ starting quarterback for their next game against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, trotting out in front of an adoring home crowd just trying to win another game, keeping it simple — the way Eli does, especially in the clutch.
“You know Eli,” offensive coordinator Mike Shula said. “He doesn’t change. That’s who he is.”