If anything’s clear with a few months to look back, it’s that the Giants badly bungled last year’s quarterback situation, and they seem to regret it deeply.
That may be why Giants co-owner and CEO John Mara was backing Eli Manning at a town hall event last night, to let people know he thought it was a mess in 2017 too.
“We can win with him,” Mara said of Manning, via Eric Barrow of the New York Daily News. “Objectively, Dave [Gettleman] and Pat [Shurmur] both said he can still play.”
When Mara said later in the event that Eli has “not missed a game due to injury,” fans responded with boos. The decision to bench Manning for a week, stop his consecutive-games streak, just to start Geno Smith should have been booed, and it cost former coach Ben McAdoo and G.M. Jerry Reese their jobs.
Manning also appeared at the event, and offered up his own assessment of the new system being put in by Shurmur.
“I’ve been throwing the ball down the field a lot more,” he said. “Every quarterback loves that.”
He also loves that he still has the chance, after the absurdity that was their 3-13 season a year ago.