The New York Giants have endured a bit of a nightmare in the 2017 season. They started the season 0-5 and Odell Beckham Jr. went down with a season-ending injury. Ben McAdoo is almost certainly a lame-duck coach just playing out the string, and uncertainty looms at quarterback with 36-year-old Eli Manning’s play declining significantly.
And now we’ve reached perhaps the strangest part of the 2017 New York Giants: Eli Manning turning down the opportunity to start so Geno Smith can take over the job. Manning, who has started for New York for years and led the Giants to two Super Bowl wins, announced along with the team on Tuesday that Smith will start against the Oakland Raiders.
If you’re already surprised that the former Jets quarterback was somehow on the Giants roster, you’ll be even more surprised to learn that McAdoo gave Manning the opportunity to start for the Giants. The veteran signal caller actually turned them down to give Smith the opportunity under center.
“Coach McAdoo told me I could continue to start while Geno and Davis are given an opportunity to play,” Manning said on Tuesday. “My feeling is that if you are going to play the other guys, play them. Starting just to keep the streak going and knowing you won’t finish the game and have a chance to win it is pointless to me, and it tarnishes the streak. Like I always have, I will be ready to play if and when I am needed. I will help Geno and Davis prepare to play as well as they possibly can.”
McAdoo also spoke to the media on Tuesday and said the move has nothing to do with Manning, but instead is about the future of the franchise.
“This is not the way it should be, but unfortunately, it’s where we are,” McAdoo said. “Our number one priority every week is to go win a game, but we owe it to the organization to get an evaluation of everybody on the roster, and that includes at the quarterback position. I’ll say it again, I have the utmost respect for Eli and everything he has done for this organization throughout his career. He is the consummate professional. He doesn’t like the position we are in, and neither do any of us. Eli has had to deal with a lot this season. Through it all, he has done everything we have asked of him in getting that unit ready to play. He has been steady, just like he has always been.”
Giants general manager Jerry Reese echoed McAdoo’s comments, saying that Manning had been a fine “franchise quarterback” but then evoked Joe Strummer in pointing out that the future is unwritten.
“This is not a statement about anything other than we are 2-9, and we have to do what is best for the organization moving forward, and that means evaluating every position,” general manager Jerry Reese said. “I told Eli this morning that an organization could not ask for any more in a franchise quarterback. He has been that and more. Nobody knows what the future holds, but right now, this is what we think is best for the franchise.”
It may be what’s right for the Giants, and you have to give both sides credit for finding a way to do this in a reasonable manner, but Manning is clearly emotional about the decision.
Eli Manning fight back tears. Almost crying, tough to see #Giants pic.twitter.com/cHRTZYEXK4
— Pat Leonard (@PLeonardNYDN) November 28, 2017
It’s not as strange as the whole Nate Peterman over Tyrod Taylor thing in Buffalo earlier this year. In fact, with Manning’s poor play this year it does, in a way, make a bit of sense. But Manning’s reign in New York ending willfully on his part is truly odd.
