CHICAGO – Eli Manning will never be what we thought he would be, what we expected him to be. If you are deemed a franchise quarterback around here, and you are the first pick of the NFL Draft, you are expected to get off the bus throwing, all the way from Broadway to East Rutherford. So the natives are getting restless, and with good reason.
Manning needs a big game, a big bounce-back game, and soon, and today at Soldier Field against the Bears would be a good place to start, before New York becomes an unbearable place for him to play. He needs a big game, a bounce-back game, and soon, to show his teammates and his coaches and organization that this will not be the start of another one of his second-half meltdowns. There is rain in the forecast and Plaxico Burress is more hobbled than ever and Derrick Ward is this week’s running back because Brandon Jacobs remains sidelined, and New York doesn’t care.
Those disgusted Giants fans that have given up on him in the wake of his four-interception nightmare against the Vikings a week ago cannot be accused of a rush to judgment, because Manning now enters his fourth December. He needs to make a stand before the rest of New York throws him to the wolves.
“At some point in time,” ESPN’s Keyshawn Johnson was saying, “he’s gonna have to turn a corner, or else people are gonna say, ‘He’s not The Guy.’ He’s in his fourth year. It’s time to turn that corner a little bit. The young kid from Ole Miss is over now.”
Just because he isn’t Tony Romo doesn’t mean he doesn’t deserve one more chance to turn that corner.
“Give him one more year,” said Johnson, like Manning a first-overall pick, taken by the Jets in 1996. “Get off his back. Let’s see what happens with the coach, with everything. It’s too early to start running him out of town. You’re in the middle of a playoff hunt. Get off his back and allow him to finish the year. Just get off his back.”
Why one more year?
“Because what’s out there that’s better?” Johnson said.
Nothing at the moment. Johnson ran into Manning at a Michael Strahan party in the city the Monday before the Vikings disaster.
“I told him, ‘Keep your head up,'” Johnson said.
But what happened at the end of the Vikings game, when Manning kept circling backward and endured a 26-yard sack, was a red flag.
“You don’t scramble around and backpedal 30 yards and just fall flat on your face,” Johnson said. “You don’t do that. You figure out a way to throw the damn ball away when nobody’s open.”
I asked Johnson what that signaled to him.
“That he’s gonna be in trouble here soon,” he said.
So what he would tell Manning now?
“Same thing,” he said. “‘Don’t worry about it. Keep your head up and don’t allow these people to get to you, and at some point in time, it’ll turn for you.'”
Manning’s lack of fire burns his critics at times like these.
“Maybe his attitude is too laid-back for New York fans,” Johnson said.
Would it be too laid-back for you if you were a teammate?
“I would say if I was on the team with him,” Johnson said, “his attitude wouldn’t be like that. His leadership wouldn’t be in question. He would fall in line and he would take on my attitude, which is, ‘I’m gonna win at all costs, no matter what the situation is.'”
At least Keyshawn doesn’t think Manning’s a stiff puppet.
“He’s a decent thrower; he’s not anything special,” Johnson said. “He’s in that second half of quarterbacks in the NFL.”
Keyshawn is pulling for Manning.
“It doesn’t help him when his leadership is questioned by a favorite Giants player like a Tiki Barber on a public stage,” Johnson said. “Now all of a sudden it opens up a can of worms to scrutinize every move he makes. It added fuel to the fire. Tiki Barber didn’t help him at all.”
And there already was a fire.
“Whoever made the decision for him to go to New York didn’t do anything for his career but add more pressure,” Johnson said.
Better turn the corner fast.