Eli Manning might not make the Pro Football Hall of Fame when the announcement about that is made in New Orleans on Thursday night, it’s far from a sure thing. But he should. He should be a first-ballot Hall of Famer, and the honor should come in front of his family, and he should hear the cheers about that in the city where he grew up and in which his father, Archie, once played. It will not be some sort of crime out of the back rooms in which these things are ultimately decided if he doesn’t make it. Just a shame.
One of the great teams Eli’s sport has ever produced, the Patriots of Bill Belichick and Tom Brady, twice couldn’t keep Eli out of the end zone in the biggest game we have in this country. The pro football writers shouldn’t keep him out of the Hall.
Eli won two Super Bowls for the Giants, one against a Patriots team that was 18-0 and on its way to what have been called the greatest season in the history of American professional sports. There is only one other starting quarterback who won two Super Bowls, and didn’t make it to Canton, and that is Jim Plunkett. Plunkett was a fine player by the time he got to the Raiders. He wasn’t Eli.
The ones who won’t vote him into the Hall this time will tell you all the things he couldn’t do and didn’t do; that his lifetime record in the regular season wasn’t above .500 (117-117) and that he was never a first-team All-Pro; that he is only 11th in all-time passing yards and 11th in touchdown passes. But this isn’t only about numbers. It never is. It is about moments, too.
He also won all those postseason road games on the way to those two Super Bowls he won with the Giants, and look around and see how easy that is to do in the modern NFL. He beat Brett Favre and the Packers in Lambeau Field, in overtime, in the extreme cold of 20-below, on the way to the first Super Bowl and a 15-1 Packers team quarterbacked by Aaron Rodgers on his way to his second.
In Glendale, Ariz., for Super Bowl XLII, on the biggest night the Giants have had in 100 years, he took his team down the field in the end, did that from behind, finally throwing it to Plaxico Burress in the left corner of the end zone. And, by the way? Plaxico is another way to evaluate the greatness of No. 10, because he was probably one of the best three wideouts he ever had, along with perhaps Victor Cruz and Hakeem Nicks. The night the Giants beat the 18-0 Pats, Eli wasn’t throwing to Randy Moss. The other quarterback, Brady, was.
And when it was all on the line against the Patriots four years later, when he was behind the Patriots, 17-15, Eli produced a drive every bit as good and memorable as the one in Glendale, 88 yards in all, ending with an Ahmad Bradshaw run. Along the way, and from the shadow of his own end zone, Eli threw one of the best deep balls I have ever seen in a Super Bowl and one of the best anybody will ever see, down the left side, in coverage, to Mario Manningham.
That is the thing with Eli Manning, even as people with their anti-New York bias and maybe even their Manning family fatigue talk about what he couldn’t do: What he could do was provide singular, lasting moments like that, showing his best when he was beating the best.
Patriots fans I know still whine about all the luck that was required for David Tyree to pin that throw from Eli to his helmet so that the ball didn’t touch the turf. What they don’t talk about nearly enough because nobody does, is how Eli even managed to get that ball away, how he somehow got away from Richard Seymour when there seemed to be no possible way in the moment that he could possibly do that.
He refused to let Seymour put him on the ground. If he had simply completed a pass to a wide-open receiver, it would have gone down as an all-time Super Bowl moment, forget about what actually did happen on the other end of the play with Tyree. Then four years to the day later, he did the same with Manningham when it looked as if the Patriots were finally going to get Eli and the Giants back for spoiling their perfect season.
He did things like that when he got the chance, on his sport’s grandest stage. He represented one of the league’s iconic franchises for 16 seasons, with immense class and toughness, able to play 210 regular-season games in a row. Only two quarterbacks ever played more consecutive games than that: Favre and Philip Rivers, who came out of the same draft as Eli did; who ended up in San Diego when Eli sure did not because Ernie Accorsi, then the Giants general manager, pulled off a draft day trade that became one of the most significant transactions in the history of New York sports, because it eventually produced those two Super Bowls.
You know who understands how much Eli meant, who fully appreciates what he did across all the consecutive games and all the seasons? Giants fans understand completely what he meant, and who he was.
“Hopefully, I can prolong this for years and years and years so it gives people things to talk about,” Eli joked with Kay Adams the other day.
He shouldn’t have to wait years and years, because of politics, or simply bad taste. He should hear his name called on Thursday night in his hometown. It should happen for him in New Orleans, and happen now. Say it again: If the Patriots couldn’t keep him out of the end zone, the writers shouldn’t be able to keep him out of the Hall.