Eli Manning spent 16 years with the Giants. He didn’t want to spend a single year with another team.
“It was important for me to go out as a Giant,” Manning said at his retirement press conference on Friday. “It was the right thing to call it a career and end it instead of trying to uproot my family.”
Manning previously made it clear that he has no interest in serving as a backup. There’s no indication that any other team would have offered him a clear-cut starting job for 2020, which surely made it easier for him to decide to walk away.
He said little about future plans, only that he intends to spend time with his family. He didn’t rule out accepting a role with the Giants at some point.
Money surely isn’t an issue for Eli; he has earned more than $250 million during his NFL career.