Why Is Eli Manning Not Playing for the Giants — Is He Done With Football?
Updated April 28 2021, 5:04 p.m. ET
There's been a lingering question on the minds of Giants fans since the beginning of the season. And that is:
Why isn't Eli Manning playing?
The football player is often the butt of jokes from sports fans, and he seems to always be cropping up in memes. Sometimes, it's for being the younger brother of Peyton Manning, a Colts/Broncos/Ford Commercial legend. Other times, it's for having a vacant expression on his face and less-than-glamorous hairstyles.
But let's pause for a minute and think about another quarterback, a Mr. Tom Brady. A man who is a total NFL underdog story. A man who was the 199th pick in the NFL draft and looks like he should be managing a Staples.
"This isn't good for throwing at all...unless."
Even though it's easy to make fun of Eli Manning for his thousand-yard "where am I?" stare, and that he rocks flowbee haircuts, it doesn't change the fact that he beat Tom Brady twice in the Super Bowl. As for him being the "lesser" Manning, I'll remind you that Eli has just as many Super Bowl wins as his older brother, and did it for the same team, and that team is the New York Giants. Now, what I'm going to say about this franchise will surely upset a lot of Giants fans.
Me when my toast falls butter-side first on the kitchen floor.
While the Giants have been playing abysmally the past few years, fans were still outraged to discover that Eli Manning wouldn't be starting for their beloved awful team. At first, they thought that rookie Daniel Jones was just starting the season out to protect Eli, or they'd only bring out the big guns once the games started counting.
But they soon realized that Jones was here to stay as the main QB, and Eli would be the alternate.
"Gahhh...get me outta here guys!"
While it might be difficult to imagine a player who's still active on the team's roster in a coaching role, NFL players, especially quarterbacks, pretty much function as coaches during the off and pre-seasons while not only training, but helping out prospective talent and guiding their careers. Peyton, Cooper, and Eli, along with their father, Archie, founded the Manning Passing Academy back in 1996.
In fact, 10 out of 32 current head coaches in the National Football League used to be QBs. The big question now on everyone's minds, however, is will Eli be the Patriots-beating Manning kinda coach? Or the coach who was QB'ing for the Giants the last few years?
Me casually waving to my wife's friends she invited over to a dinner party when I'm -2 seconds away from crapping myself and running towards the bathroom.
A man who, despite these inequities, led the New England Patriots to six Super Bowl victories and became arguably the greatest Quarterback of all time. He's also married to Gisele and has a history of being very weird in commercials, just in case you thought that playing football was all he brought to the table.