Sunday was not a very good day for me, for obvious reasons. Looking back on last week, I think I was just preparing myself for the worst and just waiting for it to hit me. And hit me, it sure did. Once the Patriots let Ahmad Bradshaw crouch into the end zone and putting the Giants ahead 21-17, I knew that it was over. Even with Tom Brady at the helm and 56 seconds left in the game to work with, I just knew it was over. During that final drive, I only looked up at the TV once, and that was to see Deion Branch drop a pass with nobody within ten yards of him.
I sat there and couldn’t believe that this was happening again. And it was happening in the same exact way! Even though there were a couple friends in the room with me, I couldn’t say anything. If I would have said anything, it surely would have been R-rated and in poor taste. To be honest, if the Patriots had to lose that Super Bowl, I would have preferred to watch the Pats lose in any other way on God’s green Earth.
Yes, even watching the Patriots get blown out 55-3 would have been more tolerable for me than watching the Giants offense systematically march down the field and (after the big play Manningham catch) knowing they were going to score one way or the other. It’s moments like this game that I wonder to myself why exactly I care so much. Why do I care about sports this much?!?
And I don’t know that answer, to be honest. But I really don’t want to sit here and catalogue all my feelings about re-living my personal greatest sports tragedy of the last decade, so let’s move on, shall we?
One of the great things about Super Bowls is that they always produce a few story lines that hang around for weeks. Sometimes those story lines will hang around for longer. Out of all the things that people are still talking about, the “Is Eli Manning a Hall-of-Famer” debate is going to be with us for a while. It’s just the way these things work.
And since everyone and their moms have a take (for the record, my mom says “yes!”) on whether Eli Manning is a Hall-of-Famer or not, who am I to not share my opinion on the topic. And my opinion is that Eli Manning is not a Hall-of-Famer. At least not yet. Yes, he just won his 2nd Super Bowl ring in dramatic fashion and now has more rings than his older, better brother Peyton. And yes, he bested Tom Brady for the second time in 5 years. But let’s just hold on one minute.
Let’s not forget who Eli Manning is and has been as a quarterback. In the Hall of Fame discussion, rings matter, and they matter a whole hell of a lot. The championships are what every single player in the NFL is chasing. But the statistics should still matter too. Too often, we’re blinded by the rings and forget all about what the player has done statistically in his career.
How does a player that was considered a good, quality, top 10 quarterback during the season all of a sudden turn into a sure-fire Hall of Famer and what some are saying is now the best quarterback in the NFL? Uhh, I just don’t get it.
Since Eli Manning just won the Super Bowl this past Sunday, you’re definitely not going to find many articles that don’t say he’s a Hall of Famer. But Kurt Warner talked about it on Tuesday to a Phoenix area radio station. Here’s some of the quotes from Simon Samano’s article quoting Warner:
“I fully disagree with that,” Warner, an NFL Network analyst and one-time Super Bowl champion, said Tuesday on Arizona Sports 620-AM in Phoenix. “You know, because I know we put a lot of weight on championships, and rightfully so. But championships are won as a team, and I’m fully convinced of that. You never see one guy — a great player, great quarterback — carry a team through the playoffs and into a Super Bowl and win a Super Bowl that way. I’ve never seen it. You know, even in that game (Super Bowl XLVI), it’s 21-17. That’s the game. There wasn’t a quarterback just up and down the field carrying the team. Yeah, he made the plays down the stretch — no question about it. He’s had two great playoff runs — or his team has had two great playoff runs. But I also look at the rest of his career.
“I mean, he has an 82 quarterback rating throughout his career,” Warner continues. “You know, he’s had five of his eight seasons where he has thrown 16 interceptions or more. His completion percentage on his career is 58 percent. To me, those aren’t Hall of Fame numbers…”
I agree with what Warner is saying here. The number of rings a QB wins during his career is always going to matter. But it can’t be the only thing that matters, can it? I am reading some articles where people are saying that we should only look at the fact that Manning has now won 2 Super Bowls and now nothing else about his career should matter. Well, I’m just saying we should hold on for a minute. We don’t have to crown his ass as a Hall-of-Famer yet, do we? (Sorry, my inner-Dennis-Green just comes out every now and again when I’m writing.)
At this point, I would like to be able to throw some sort of complex analytics and formulas at you to make you agree with me that Eli Manning is not a Hall of Fame quarterback, but that is not my forte. Instead I visited Pro Football Reference and looked to see who they compared the current Eli Manning to. The list? David Garrard, Jake Delhomme, Carson Palmer, Ben Roethlisberger, Chad Pennington, Stan Humphries, Tony Romo, Aaron Brooks, Daryle Lamonica, and Doug Williams.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know Pro Football Reference isn’t the end-all, be-all verdict on whether Eli Manning is a Hall of Famer, nor should it be. But still, there is some truth to the fact that statistically, Eli compares to a lot of average quarterbacks.
So let’s hold off until Eli Manning gets closer to the end of his career, and let’s see where we’re at with the whole Hall of Fame debate and Eli.
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