LEFT SPEECHLESS
Toomer hoping there will be better things to say about Giants
The game would end and, well, there was not a lot to say.
“It was tough,” former Giants wide receiver Amani Toomer said of last season’s disastrous 3-13 campaign.
“I do the postgame shows and there was nothing positive to highlight and you want something good to talk about. I like pointing out when people do things right and last year I wasn’t able to do that because there wasn’t much right going on.”
Toomer won a Super Bowl with Eli Manning and watched him suffer through the indignity of being benched last season, snapping a 210-game starting streak. The tone-deaf handling of that decision unceremoniously ended the Ben McAdoo and Jerry Reese era, making way for Pat Shurmur and Dave Gettleman.
New coach, new GM, new star running back, same old starting quarterback. The Giants resisted the temptation to draft a quarterback with the No. 2 pick, instead going with Penn State running back Saquon Barkley. That leaves the present very much in the 37-year-old Manning’s hands.
“I feel like he has a fistful of sand that he’s trying to hold on to,” Toomer, who is one of a handful of former Giants breaking down the preseason on MSG Network’s “Training Camp Live (Monday-Thursday, 6 p.m.),” said of Manning.
“What he needs is some rocks to hold on to and get a handle on stuff. The fact that he hasn’t really had the offensive line, it seems like sometimes he tries to make things happen and I just see him pressing.”
The first brief look at Manning, Barkley and a revamped offensive line could come Thursday in the Giants’ preseason opener against the Browns, who took Baker Mayfield with the top pick of the draft. The quarterbacks behind Manning — Davis Webb and Kyle Lauletta — do not represent the same sort of immediate threat Mayfield does to Browns starter Tyrod Taylor. However, Manning’s play — erratic in recent seasons — will be closely scrutinized.
“With a solid running game, it’s not all going to be on him,” Toomer said. “I pointed to what John Elway did the last couple of years with the Broncos when they brought in Terrell Davis and it really helped him be a better quarterback because he wasn’t forced to do everything. You’ll see [Eli] having more time, looking down the field, not being rushed and throwing the ball all over the place. Some of the interceptions and fumbles that have happened, sometimes he’s trying to do too much. He just doesn’t have time to operate the offense the way he wants to do it.”
That will be the talk for the regular season. The preseason will be opportunities for Webb and Lauletta — taken in the past two drafts — to state their case for being Manning’s heir apparent whenever that should come.
“It’s going to be very important for him,” Toomer said of Webb, who did not get in a regular-season game as a rookie. “He’s going to have to show a command of the offense, [that] he can get the team in and out of the right plays. I want to see him throw the ball to where the defense is dictating and how comfortable he is with the mastery of the offense.”