There’s More to Being Elite Than “ELI”

By: Stephen Caronia

As Jay Cutler knelt on the last play of Sunday’s win over the Detroit Lions, the last 38 seconds of the season ticked away for the New York Giants.  The last waning moments of the Giants Super Bowl hangover complete, we are left to ask, again, why can’t this team pull it together more consistently? And no player on this Giants team embodies its ups and down better than Eli Manning.  Game after game, year after year, Eli toes the line between hero and goat.  He’s had his benching requested by the New York media and won Super Bowl MVP within two months of each other.  In August of 2011, coming off a season in which he led the NFL in interceptions and the Giants missed the playoffs, Eli said that he is in the same “class” as Tom Brady.  Since telling Michael Kay that he is in the same “class” as Tom Brady, he beat the Golden Boy as MVP of Super Bowl XLIV and played football in 2012 that his own head coach described as “foolish” for an encore.  Thus is the career of Eli Manning.

So how do we classify the youngest Manning brother?  Can we spell elite without E-L-I?  Let’s look at his career and then see how he stacks up against the only 4 QBs of this generation who we can all agree are elite: Tom Brady, Drew Brees, Aaron Rodgers, and Peyton Manning.

Any QB who wants to be counted among the greats has to do one thing above all else: win.  Careers are validated by Super Bowls and questioned without them (ask Dan Fouts , Warren Moon, and Dan Marino ).  In this realm, Eli is up there with the best of ‘em winning 2 Super Bowls and grabbing the MVP twice in the process.  For Eli fans, this case is closed.  You want the list of people with multiple Super Bowl MVPs? Bart Starr, Terry Bradshaw, Joe Montana, Tom Brady, Eli Manning. That’s it.  You might recognize one or two of them.

However, I have a big problem with judging someone’s value based solely or even primarily on Super Bowl rings.  We mentioned Dan Fouts, Warren Moon and Dan Marino.  Go check out their numbers.   I’ll wait…

Pretty good, huh?  Between the three of them there’s one Super Bowl appearance and no wins.  Want another three QBs? Trent Dilfer, Doug Williams, and Jim McMahon; all three Super Bowl winners (Williams even won Super Bowl MVP).No offense to those guys, but who are you taking at QB in the all-time fantasy draft? I’m not trying to diminish the accomplishments of these guys, believe me.  Its not easy navigating a team to a Super Bowl win, or else people wouldn’t give so much credence when QBs do it.  But if you use that as your be all and end all you’re going to come up awfully short in evaluating a QB’s value.  There are 52 other players and 53 on the other side that all play a role in a team winning or losing, especially in the playoffs.  A kick is missed. Or made.  A crazy special teams play.  Referees get into the mix.  Weather can be a factor.  Inches are lost.  Miracles happen.  Championship runs are made of such stuff.  Should everything the quarterback does be stricken from the record at this point because his team gets a W? Do you think Eli Manning has ever won a game based on the spectacular play or mistake performed by someone else?

Having said all that, the point is that Eli winning two Super Bowls by itself does not make him an elite quarterback of this generation.  He isn’t better than Brees, Rodgers, or his brother simply because they each have one Super Bowl MVP and he has two.  However, we must count his accomplishments as a major positive for him overall. He is 8-3 in the playoffs over his career with the aforementioned Super Bowl runs.  When good Eli shows up, he can be tough to stop…

…but when bad Eli shows up…. here is where he loses me.  If there is one big knock on Eli, it’s the fact that you never know who is going to show up one week to the next.  Look, all QBs, even the greats, have slumps and up and down stretches.  Take a look at Drew Brees in the first month of 2007 or Brady’s skittish moments after coming back from ACL surgery in 2009.  The difference is, elite quarterbacks have these stretches very few and far between.  Eli has them almost every year.  I’d like to examine 2007, 2011, and 2012 for a true sense of what Eli can be like.

In 2007, Eli was the 25 rated passer in the NFL with a 73.2 rating.  He tied for the league lead in interceptions with 20.  He completed 56% of his passes, good for 29^th in the league. If we use the 32^nd ranked passer rating as a Mendoza line (Rex Grossman with 66.4), Eli was NOT STARTER MATERIAL IN 7 GAMES.  The Giants record in those games? 5-2. In the 5 wins, the Giants defense let up just 252 yards of offense per game and averaged 166.8 yards on the ground.  In short, they won in spite of Eli.  Now, after the week 12 debacle against Minnesota in which Eli threw 3 pick sixes and was all but beheaded in the Meadowlands parking lot, Eli goes on a glorious playoff run and all is forgotten.  But what if the Giants lose just one of those games in which Eli was awful, especially in week 3 against the Redskins? Well, our Boys in Blue don’t even make the playoffs.  And Eli never even has the chance to win Super Bowl MVP, even though we all know it should have gone to Justin Tuck (2 sacks, one forced fumble, 8,000 pressures).

Let’s peek at 2011, Eli’s finest season as a pro and the one in which in appeared he made the leap.  He was 7^th in the league in passer rating, 4^th in yardage with a monstrous 4933, had a solid 29-17 TD-Int ratio, and an astounding 8 4^th quarter game winning drives.  Yet, once again, the Giants found themselves in desperate need on wins at the end of the year in order to sneak into the playoffs.  They win the division at 9-7 and the rest is history.  However, we have to ask what if? What if the Jets can tackle Victor Cruz? What if that Dan Bailey field goal isn’t blocked? Again, the Giants miss the playoffs and the opportunity for Eli’s spectacular run to the championship.  Now, would that INvalidate everything Eli accomplished that year? It shouldn’t and it didn’t because they won.

This year, it was another season of one or two plays for the Giants.  They lost their chance at the playoffs in the last week of the season despite crushing the Eagles in Andy Reid’s sendoff.  Eli was mediocre overall, ranking 21^st in completion percentage, 17^th in TDs and passer rating, and 12^th in yards per attempt.  He had 5 awful performances against the Cowboys (the 2^nd time), Steelers, Bengals, Falcons, and Ravens, where the Giants had 4 losses and one win by Dez Bryant’s fingertips.  He was still better than he was in 2007. In addition, this season was very similar to 2010 and 2009.  The only season the Giants appeared to be dominant, 2008, where they went 12-4 and earned a first round bye, Eli was abysmal in a thrashing at the hands of the Eagles in the Divisional Round.

So we can see how up and down Eli can be, how tenuous his opportunities for success have been, and how his playoff successes are not indicative of his entire body of work.  We see that the Giants have won because of him and in spite of him.  We see that while he has had 2 incredible playoff runs, his poor play has sometimes cost the Giants opportunities.  We see that luck plays a role (as it does with almost all champions).  In a vacuum, I don’t think this is an elite quarterback.

Quickly, let’s pick a few key numbers and stack him up against our unquestioned elite foursome.

In this snapshot, the only guy Eli comes close to is Drew Brees, and he’s still not quite up to snuff.  These are limited numbers, for sure, but they give a quick idea of the difference between guys who do it consistently and guys who falter more often.  That’s what elite is, right? Performing at an exceptionally high level week in and week out.  Eli, for all of his success, simply doesn’t do that.  My verdict: Eli is not elite.

Which will be really interesting to think about when he’s inducted into the Hall of Fame…

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