CHAPTER 26
LAST MANNING STANDING
Eli Manning, of course, spent the 2016 season gathering up his skills and sanity for the Giants’ rise from the dead. Most expected them to be a mess, and in many ways they were. The hirsute Ben McAdoo, promoted from his old job as Tom Coughlin’s offensive coordinator, had exactly two good things going for him on that side of the ball: Eli and his chancy receiver branded as “OBJ,” and the latter could go very bad very quickly. The surprise was that there was an astounding turnabout from the year before. This year, the offense was often stodgy, finishing 25th, the rushing game a total joke—compiling a total of six ground touchdowns, by far the worst in the NFL. Yet defensive coordinator Steve Spagnuolo suddenly had a monster defense, giving up the second-fewest points in the league, distressing quarterbacks with 35 sacks and 17 interceptions.
However, it still seemed up to Eli to close the deal. That he had to do it living off Odell Beckham Jr. ensured a long road of peaks and nadirs, not to mention psychotic scenes. Worse, in midseason, kicker Josh Brown—who had been re-signed even after his wife filed domestic abuse charges against him eight times—was cut in late October after journal entries and emails came to light in which he admitted to the crimes, for which he was never prosecuted.1 Along the way, Beckham, who had not moderated his behavior at all, was alternately the hero and the clown. He became the fastest to ever get to 200 career catches and 4,000 yards, but he seemed to carve out new ground in lunacy during an early game against the Redskins when, despite seven catches and 121 yards, he stomped up and down the sideline, making bizarre gestures and facial expressions. And then, in the ultimate schlimazel moment, after Eli threw a fourth-quarter interception, Beckham, helmet in his hand, crashed it into the kicking net, which collapsed on top of his chia-topped head. As if he were toe-to-toe with a human enemy, he furiously pushed it away and glared at the wrecked net. He then began to weep uncontrollably.
Eli, seeing this man come unwrapped, came over and stood with him, trying somehow to ease his demons, but said nothing critical afterward. Two weeks later, the Giants, at 2–3 and with the season perhaps on the line, played the Ravens. After Beckham caught a 75-yard touchdown, he ran over to the kicking net and seemed to kiss it, then did a hip-grinding pantomime of a man having sex with an inanimate object, before dropping to his knees and miming a man proposing to the net. Some thought it funny, others disturbing, but most were simply tired of his antics. Then, with the Giants trailing 23–20, 1:43 left, on a fourth-and-one, he ran a short slant, caught the ball, and blew by everyone for a 66-yard touchdown. Stripping off his helmet, he strutted around like a bantam cock for a good minute, incurring a penalty.
Winning because of Beckham—who had eight catches for 222 yards—yet despite Beckham seemed to be too much for Eli, though typically, his rebuke was weak tea. The next night, he went on a local radio show and, rolling out each word warily, said, semi-coherently, “It’s one of those deals where you can get real sick of it if you’re not going out there and making plays.” While it was nothing close to what one headline labeled a “blast” leveled at Beckham, for Eli, it was. However, Beckham took it as a practical endorsement, as long as he made those catches.2
That win probably saved the season. It got them to .500, and Eli’s 397 passing yards righted him after a rocky start. He moved past Elway for seventh on the all-time touchdown list, becoming only the eighth quarterback over 300, not that he was so impressed with himself. “After I’m done playing, I’ll look back and see where I stand, maybe or maybe not, I don’t know,” he said in Eli-ese.3 It also began a six-game winning streak of mainly close games pulled out by Eli, though only four times in that span did he go over 200 yards. While the Cowboys ended up 13–3, the Giants swept their two meetings. Always finding a way, a severely limited team went 11–5 and earned a wild-card spot. The slickest trick was that Eli rang up over 4,000 yards passing, with 26 touchdowns and a modest 16 interceptions, his rating a quite competent 86. But he could not escape blame for imperfection. Read one press dispatch, “Manning has three years left on his current contract with the New York Giants, it’s time to start thinking about life without him.”4
Of course, he was nowhere near ready to think about that, even if his team was aging him beyond his 36 years. When, six days before the Giants’ playoff game in Green Bay, Beckham and most of the other receivers jetted off to Miami for a day of partying on a yacht, sparking a kerfuffle in the media, Eli was asked to comment and attempted to calm the storm.
“I think as a team we always pride ourselves on being well prepared,” he began, “so when I saw some of the pictures, I was a little disappointed.”
Reporters in the room gathered, hushed, already scribbling their “Manning Bashes Beckham” headlines. And then he delivered a quick scoring pass: “Obviously, they didn’t pack accordingly. They didn’t have any shirts, all long pants, no shorts, no flip-flops. Disappointed on their packing and not being prepared for that situation.” He also said he was glad he wasn’t in the group because he would have had to “take off my shirt,” which is nobody’s idea of pretty.
That soothing syrup quieted the situation. In Lambeau Field, scene of two of his greatest games, he did his part, getting the jump on Aaron Rodgers by moving the team to two early field goals while the Pack were seemingly frozen on their famous tundra. But then passes began bouncing off receivers’ hands, most grievously Beckham and rookie Sterling Shepard, robbing Eli of two touchdowns.
Neither could the defense stem Rodgers, who threw a Hail Mary touchdown just before halftime—something Eli had done the last time they met in the playoffs. In the end, the Giants were humbled 38–13, sending Beckham banging his head against a locker room door, then punching the wall. Beckham had only one explanation for his dropped balls.
“It was freezing,” he said.
Eli, meanwhile, sat at his locker, engaged in another exercise in sportsmanlike defeat. He had gone 23 of 44 for 299 yards and a touchdown. “You got to keep working,” he said, “and hopefully, you get more opportunities.” Then, unprompted, came a somewhat odd vow, as if he had been debating with himself whether he should consider retiring—“I plan on being back next year.”5
The shadow of his big brother still seemed to loom over him. Days before, Peyton had been elected to the College Football Hall of Fame, the prelude to his sure induction into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2020. For Eli, a third title would likely be his ticket to the Hall. But if he gets it, it will probably not be because of personal hubris. Indeed, a piece in Psychology Today a few years ago, titled “The Psychology of Archie Manning and Sons,” posited that Eli’s “nonchalance at times permits him to perform beyond expectations under the greatest pressure.”6 True enough. However, when you’re the last of a dynasty, self-sworn to upholding family tradition, it can feel like a cross to bear. As he strode off the field, ice frozen on his helmet, head hung, staring at his dirty cleats, one could almost read his mind. There were many factors involved in the team losing. But only he had let his family down.
He had only more reason to bear such private shame in 2017. This edition of the Giants would place a greater burden on him than most expected. Forecast by many to win the NFL East, their unresolved problems—the offensive line and the running game—put them in a hole from the start. Nothing Eli could do kept them from losing their first five, extending to eight their streak of games lost when scoring under 20 points. And Ben McAdoo was playing the blame game with his quarterback. Beckham was lost for the season with a fractured ankle. When Eli’s brain freeze on a goal-line play resulted in a costly delay-of-game penalty in a loss to the Lions in week two, the coach didn’t hesitate to blame “sloppy quarterback play” for the team’s doldrums, rather than, say, sloppy coaching or sloppy general managing by Jerry Reese. A New York Post headline had it that Eli had been “thrown under the bus,”7 while at the same time regurgitating old what-ifs about whether he was through. Eli readily admitted that he “deserved the criticism,” though he laughed off a question again being asked on a heavy-breathing ESPN program, “Is Eli done?”
“Everybody had gotten very sensitive,” he noticed, not needing to add “again.” From his perspective, “You play 14 years in New York, you’ve been criticized. You can take pretty much whatever they throw at you.”8
All he could do was to keep marching in step with the guiding principle of Manning Inc., which is that work, faith, and family will ultimately be rewarded, at least until time starts marching ahead of you and your team is dead last in offense and defense. Indeed, the only Giant win after nine weeks, 23-10 over Peyton’s old Broncos, came despite him not doing all that much, going 11 of 19 for 128 yards and one touchdown—though the most impressive number that day was zero picks. Perhaps sensing he could win a power struggle with his own quarterback and survive the season with the éclat to trade Eli, a seemingly deranged McAdoo ignored his biggest problems—the execrable offensive line and running game—to say Manning was “underperforming” and that no one was untouchable on the Giants—“not even the quarterback.”
All this static was before the beyond-bizarre move by McAdoo to yank Eli from the starting lineup for the December 3 game against the Raiders in Oakland. That idea apparently had not been McAdoo’s originally but rather, according to reports, brought to him by Jerry Reese, with the implicit approval of co-owner John Mara, though he said he assumed Manning would start the game and be removed for the second half. With the Giants 2–9, it wasn’t necessarily illogical. As Mara said, the team’s performance “speaks for itself.” What’s more, some observers pointed out that Eli’s quarterback rating was the lowest in the NFL over the past four seasons, and was clearly on the way down. However, McAdoo didn’t name as the starter the team’s rookie third-round pick, Davis Webb, but a quarterback some did not even realize was still in the league: Geno Smith, who had failed spectacularly with the Jets and was primarily remembered for having his jaw broken by one of his own teammates in an argument about money.
The optics of the change sent New York into a frenzy. The longtime WFAN host Mike Francesa branded McAdoo and Reese as “gutless,” and said that the coach should look at Manning’s championship rings because “that’s as close as you’re ever gonna get to one.” Eli, maintaining his even-tempered air of nobility, said, “I don’t like it, but you handle it.” But Archie wouldn’t play along. Eli, he said, “isn’t bitter, but he is hurt.” Smith did little to make his case, losing to the Raiders 20–10, whereupon, with a number of former Giants threatening to show up and stand on the sideline showing solidarity with Eli by wearing his jersey, the experiment ended with Eli being reinstated as the starter, preceding by a few days the merciful firing of McAdoo and Reese and the promotion of Steve Spagnuolo as interim head coach.
Showing he still had it, Eli threw for over 400 yards and three touchdowns against the Eagles, though the close 34–29 loss cemented a fourth-place finish in the division, their worst since 2003. Only an 18–10 win in the finale in Washington, despite Eli relapsing with a 10-of-28, 132-yard wreck of a game, spared them their worst record in team history. In the end, it was best to simply try to forget the season and its frightfully bad numbers—19th in passing yards, 26th in rushing, 23rd in touchdowns. Worse, on defense they were 31st against the pass, 27th against the run. Eli still managed to throw for 3,468 yards, 19 touchdowns, with a modest 13 picks, his 80.4 rating a far cry better than the 69.4 disaster of 2013. And, coming into 2018, he had the commitment of the new coach, Pat Shurmer, who, although his credentials are a tad underwhelming, seemed to fully understand that Eli Manning—whom he called “outstanding” and vowed to keep as the starter—meant something visceral to the franchise. Something Jim Irsay didn’t when he drafted a hyped college quarterback who was supposed to make everyone forget Peyton Manning.
Remarkably, being as inscrutable a character as he was, even now, grizzled as he was, he seemed still an evolving, unfinished work whose highest authority was embodied in the demands of his surname. As such, he still was laboring in the shadow of the brother who made that surname into a mark of royalty, and who still bears it. In early 2017, when Peyton was sighted—and there is always a Peyton sighting somewhere—at the Pebble Beach Pro-Am golf tournament, he was surrounded on the fairway by a mob sticking No. 18 orange jerseys and other Manning bric-a-brac in his face, demanding his autograph. It was such a frenetic scene that one sportswriter called it “pretty terrifying.”9 And yet, not a soul who knew him would have expected to ever find him on a ranch in Montana, hiding behind a big white beard.
He was hopelessly addicted to attention, the great narcotic of fame and the lifeblood of the business that surrounds it. The next step was to film his newest Nationwide commercial with country crooner Brad Paisley, in the guise of a vain, overbearing record producer continually badgering the mellow singer—a perfect metaphor for his on-field persona, which he willingly sent up. He then hosted the ESPY Awards show, nimbly delivering put-downs of the elite sports crowd. His gag about the US Olympic women’s gymnastics team being so good that Kevin Durant, the Golden State Warriors’ newly signed mercenary superstar, wanted to play for them, played to perfection by a glowering Durant, was the enduring highlight of the show and immediately went viral.
Eli, still keeping pace with him, would leave his mark after all on the 2018 Super Bowl, the first one Brady had lost to any quarterback but him. Still in tune with Beckham, the pair filmed an in-house ad for the NFL that smartly parodied those already-parody end-zone twerkings with a spoof of Dirty Dancing, Eli doing something like dancing before crooking an inviting finger toward Odell and then lifting him high above his head. But Peyton’s family-oriented “Quarterback Vacation” spot for the Universal theme park was a winner, too, that day, with him batting one-liners back and forth with kids and at one point barking “Omaha” while preparing for a selfie; the best line went to a little girl, trying in vain to tutor him on gaming lingo, then sighing, “You’re uncoachable.”
Such frivolous but necessary-to-the-brand matters were not in the purview of the patriarch, who begat and handed down all the glory, glitter, and agita of fame. Nearing 70, Archie, the rosy-cheeked, freckle-faced, one-time quarterback of the future who once seemed to be that kind of broader cultural hero, had spanned more historical tides than even a wise man like him could hope to process. But in his world, football had insulated him through many roiling waters. He’s not regal, wears no championship rings, but of prime importance to him, he chairs the National Football Foundation, winner of that organization’s Gold Medal in 2016, and is in the College Football Hall of Fame. Still a New Orleans staple, he went into the Saints Hall of Fame in 1988, wanting or expecting little more.
He lives equally with pride and agony, still amazed at the wonder of it all. As he waited in the tunnel outside the Broncos locker room in Santa Clara, waiting for Peyton to come out and take his leave from the sport, he was humming his favorite song. Naturally, it’s a country song, the kind that reaches deep into the soul: Kris Kristofferson’s “Why Me,” recorded by, among others, Elvis, Johnny Cash, and Merle Haggard. The first line goes:
Why me Lord, what have I ever done
To deserve even one of the pleasures I’ve known?
He will never know the answer. But on that day, when the Manning brand ruled the football world, possibly for the last time, his shoes half immersed in a puddle flooding the corridor, smelling the same fetid fragrance from a locker room that he had 50 years ago, Elisha Archibald Manning III would not have wanted to be anywhere else.