1) Details of Mario Manningham’s deal were disclosed late last week. In the grand scheme of things, the amount of money (and the length of the contract) is not that large. Or, to put it another way, I would not have had a problem with Reese paying that amount to keep Mario Manningham. And his departure from the Giants is getting more touches. As Giants’ fans, we saw first hand the 49ers do not have enough weapons at the wide out position. In the NFC Championship game, 49ers wideouts caught ONE pass. One of the ways that I can articulate a defense of that view is that when I watched a replay of the Giants’ season on the XLVI DVD, I was struck with how many TDs were scored by MM. During the regular season, when teams had not yet started rotating their coverage to Victor Cruz, MM pulled down 4 TDs. By the playoffs, that had changed- MM had 3 TDs, second only to Hakeem Nicks’ 4. Victor Cruz had 1 playoff TD (vs NE). What we all know is that Manningham was an integral part of this Super Bowl run, and those TDs remind us that it will be important for others to step up.
For Manningham going forward from here, the first thing the 49ers are going to see is how slowly Mario picks up the offense. MM was in the league for 4 years and he could barely go a game without being on the wrong page with is QB on a route tree. SF was well-coached last season in the first year of Jim Harbaugh. We would expect them to simplify the routes of MM, for the sake of both WR and QB. Needless to say, MM will not have a problem picking up their offense because most of Smith’s drop backs are one read throws.
2) A while back we discussed QB-led 4th Quarter comebacks. Here is a list of where every NFL QB ranks historically in that category. There are many takeaways to be gleaned from this list.
The top 8 on the list are all in the Hall of Fame or going there. (Sorry Vinny.)
I have always said that Kerry Collins is underappreciated. Showing up at #11 all-time does nothing but remind us that he was a gamer.
Eli Manning, at his current rate, is on a path to join those Top 8 if he stays healthy.
A player like Joe Montana is punished statistically when you look at this criteria because the defenses he played with were simply better than Marino’s. (If you were/are a great QB, you just want to show up somewhere relatively high.)
Eli, Brees and Roethlisberger are all on trajectories to go to the Hall of Fame as long as they stay healthy.
Add The Sports Daily to your Google News Feed!
