BEST, AT WORST
Low point of Super season, Eli’s fortitude shined through
THERE will be highlights, of course, lots of highlights, end-toend highlights of Eli Manning’s greatest hits, and that’s how it should be on the day the Giants retire his No. 10. Manning is not only one of the great Giants of all time but one of the most important, and there ought to be a proper celebration of all of that.
So we will see the high points: Elito-David Tyree. Eli-to-Plaxico Burress. Eli-to-Mario Manningham. Elito-just-about-everyone. It will be wonderful. It will be perfect.
It will not be what I think of Sunday.
Sunday, I will go another way. My memory will center on Manning’s worst day as a professional, one of the worst days a Giant has ever endured, one of the truly awful days any quarterback has ever suffered through. For all the triumphs, all the highlights, all the times Manning made you stand up and cheer, it was that day that hardened him and toughened him and forced him to face a crucial question: Are you for real or not? Are you a star or not? It was Nov. 25, 2007. The Giants were enjoying a fine season, walked into their Thanksgiving Sunday date with the Vikings at 7-3. They walked out 7-4, throttled at old Giants Stadium, 41-17. And there was one culprit and one alone: Eli Manning. He was intercepted four times. Three of them were returned for touchdowns and the other set up a fourth. He threw 27 incompletions. He was wild high, wild low, wild left, wild right. Late in the game, with maybe 4,000 fans still inside the building, he was dropped for a 26yard loss on a sack. If you were to draw it up, it would be hard to conjure a worse day for a quarterback. But two things happened that day. As ever, Manning stood up afterward and demanded responsibility.
“That’s just not acceptable,” he said. “It’s not something I can ever do again. I let my teammates down. They know I played hard, but playing hard isn’t enough sometimes. You have to play well, too.”
Also: Eli’s teammates immediately sprang to action. Remember, this was when it was still a mystery how highly Eli was thought of in his own locker room. Tiki Barber, who had retired after the 2006 season, had intimated that. So had incumbent (for the moment) tight end Jeremy Shockey.
But in Manning’s worst hour, the Giants stood up. Burress made a point of running to Manning after his ignominious sack, patting him on the helmet, walking off the field with his arm draped around him.
Shaun O’Hara: “If we had enough players to bench all 22 of us, then we should all be benched. Not just one guy cost us this game.”
Amani Toomer: “He’ll be back. We all know that.”
Michael Strahan: “If you think this is on one guy, you have no idea what you just saw.”
A few days after, I was chatting with Ernie Accorsi, the man who made a draft-day trade for Manning, who was then enjoying his first year of retirement. Accorsi, who knows a lot about a lot, casually and cryptically dropped this number on me: 105.
He explained: “Eli’s day reminded me of a day Joe Namath had against the Bills in the ’68 season. He had five picks. Three of them were pick-sixes. And 105 days later he beat us [Accorsi went to work for the Colts in 1970] in Super Bowl III.”
“You never know,” Accorsi said, winking.
Manning did scuffle at times the rest of the year. In the game that clinched a playoff bid for the Giants, in Buffalo two days before Christmas, he was all but eliminated from the game plan. But a week later, he was great in a close loss to the undefeated Patriots. He gained momentum in playoff wins over the Buccaneers, Cowboys and Packers. Then knocked off the 18-0 Pats in Super Bowl XLII.
Exactly 70 days after the Vikings debacle. I texted Accorsi the day after that win: “70.”
“You never know,” he texted back.
Out of his greatest misery, Eli Manning was able to build his greatest triumph. It was something to see. Today, it’s what I will celebrate about him. Tough hombre, No. 10. He’ll be a part of the best parts of New York sports forever.