Eli Manning Has Been Benched, and That's Okay
- Matt P
- Nov 30, 2017
- 3 min read
On Tuesday, New York Giants' head coach Ben McAdoo announced that Eli Manning will be benched in favor of Geno Smith for Sunday's matchup against the Oakland Raiders, effectively putting an end to one of the most prestigious streaks in the history of the league—Eli's 210 consecutive starts, which trails only Brett Favre's 297.
The reception to this announcement has been overwhelmingly negative, to put it mildly. Former teammates took to social media to pile on the organization, all our favorite talking heads treated this turn of events as if Eli had died in a plane crash, and, of course, Stephen A. Smith chose it for his daily reason to lose his absolute shit on First Take. Osi Umenyiora called the decision absurd. Justin Tuck, who, for reasons unknown has blocked me on Twitter, called it "one of the STUPIDEST" decisions he's ever seen. The cries for McAdoo to be fired are louder than ever.
Let's not kid ourselves here. McAdoo, along with his shape-shifting haircut and shocking level of incompetence, is already a dead man walking. For all intents and purposes, he's been fired since his team took a collective dump on their home field against the Rams in Week 9, or frankly, probably even before that. For a franchise that's usually loyal to a fault (they fired Tom Coughlin about 2 years later than they should have because of sentimentality), the move to bench Eli for the remainder of the season shows that they can see past the cloud of nostalgia for once.
That's encouraging! Yes, the Giants have a better chance of winning football games with Eli starting. But right now, at a record of 2-9, and given the Giants' projected spot in the upcoming draft, winning football games would be an incredibly irresponsible thing to do. (I've seen my Knicks late-season pride-win themselves out of picking way too many superstars over the years—you don't want to be like the Knicks.) There are almost never enough worth-a-damn quarterbacks at the top of the draft to go around for everyone, even for the familiar faces in the top 10 of the draft (ask the Browns and Jets, who've been in quarterback limbo for seemingly their entire existence). And unless you are the Browns, trainwrecks of a season like this are hard to come by. The last time the Giants had one was in 2003 when they finished 4-12, after which they drafted the guy who this article is about (via a trade with the Chargers for Philip Rivers). In this year's crop of quarterbacks, the consensus is that several of them are indeed worth-a-damn (and, as history suggests, only several out of those will actually be worth-a-damn). Taking all of that into account, this is an important turning point for the franchise. With an aging quarterback like Eli, the Giants doing anything other than going full #TheProcess for the rest of the season would be ill-considered.
If there's a criticism to be had here, it's that the Giants are (at least initially) choosing to start former Jets' legend Geno Smith over last year's 3rd round pick Davis Webb, but from the sounds of it, the rookie will be getting his chance soon, once he gets a full week of reps under his belt. Sure, he'll probably suck, though I'm not convinced Aaron Rodgers would succeed on this offense in its current shape. But we'll never know anything about him if he remains strapped to the bench. The team owes it to themselves to at least see what he is.
Yes, it hurt to see Eli fighting back the tears when talking to reporters about it Tuesday. He's accomplished a ton of great things for the Giants while being, by all accounts, a great leader, teammate, and person. Emotional attachments aside, it's the right move. It's time for the Giants to start thinking about the future.
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