Giants great Phil Simms talks about how Eli Manning must be feeling now that he’s been replaced as the starter by Daniel Jones. As told to Steve Serby:
I have thought about Eli Manning today, just knowing what he’s going through, his family and himself. I know it’s very tough.
It’s a terrible day for him. For me, it happened during an offseason. For Eli, it’s happening during the season. So he’s going to be on the sidelines in practice and around all the time, and then also, he’s going to have to be ready to play and not get down — just because you know how NFL football is, with what we saw this past weekend (injuries to Ben Roethlisberger and Drew Brees). There’s still a pretty good chance he’ll play again this year, so he’ll have to stay ready.
It’s gonna be very hard emotionally for him, and rightly so, but I think he’s been in the league long enough to know that you never know. It could be this week.
I can relate to what Eli is going through — every player in the league can. Not just quarterbacks or ex-Giants or Giants. I know coaches, who are 70 years old, that go, “Why are you still doing it?” and they all say the same thing: “Man, there’s nothing like running out on a field on a Sunday.” You can’t get enough of those moments.
There’s Peyton Manning, with all his great success and tremendous career. Do you think he wanted to walk away? Why would any of us? You walk away because of injury when you know you can’t compete. Being in Eli’s shoes makes it harder, because he’s still physically healthy, and thinks and knows he can still play.
I was driving to Showtime to record “Inside the NFL” and I heard the news on the radio. Even after Pat Shurmur opened the door to a change on Monday, I still thought Eli would start against Tampa Bay. It’s not where you want to make your first start, against Todd Bowles’ defense. It did catch me by surprise. We can come up with a hundred reasons why they could have and we could come up with just about as many why they probably should have kept Eli in there, too. There’s no perfect time.
I had zero idea when Dan Reeves called me up to his office. I think I’d just come off the field from throwing with a bunch of guys, and somebody said, “Dan Reeves wants to see you.” Coach was always involved in charities, I remember thinking, “He probably wants me to come up and sign some footballs for charity.”
As soon as I walk in, I could see that he was not looking me in the eye. We sit down, he goes, “Phil I got some bad news. We’re gonna let you go today.” I just said, “Really?”
We talked a few minutes and it was a great conversation with Dan. We had only one year together, but it was a really tremendous rewarding year. I really enjoyed our player-coach relationship. We almost over-achieved.
I can’t remember if he said it was about the salary cap or anything like that. I didn’t argue … there was nothing to say.
As I drove home, it was just really strange to think that, “Wow, I’m not gonna be playing football for the Giants this year,” it really was. I really truly, of course, was taking it for granted and it happened so fast, it was hard to have a lot of emotions about it because it was so quick.
I just wanted to play professional, and then I was drafted by the Giants. Once I got up here and started playing and being here, I realized being quarterback of the New York Giants was really special. It’s made my life, and my family’s life, just because it is New York, and they are the Giants, and to be part of it was … even while I was playing, I knew it was something special.
What I did that night in Super Bowl XXI fortunately has lived on and on. I laugh sometimes that Joe Namath and I have gotten more out of one game than anybody else in sports, you know? I don’t reminisce myself very much, but that would be fun to sit down one day and just watch it and just go, “Wow! Why couldn’t I have had more days like that?”
Of course there were the hard times. I did ask Bill Parcells to trade me after he made Scott Brunner the starter in 1983, but that died down quickly. Hey, nobody ever listens to me as it is in life, so I’m glad they didn’t listen to me that day.
I never once laid in bed and went, “Oh, why did they boo me? I can’t believe they booed me.” I never once, even after I was drafted, before I got to New York, before practice, before anything, it never crossed my mind, it never bothered me. And to this day, it still doesn’t bother me.
What a career Eli has had. So many achievements, never missing a game, those are memories he’ll keep forever, as I have learned as time has gone on and I appreciate ’em more and more as I get older.
Aside from the Super Bowl, I think of him beating the Cowboys on the road in the playoffs, and Brett Favre in the cold in Green Bay, and the beating he took like an old-style quarterback and beat the 49ers in the 2011 NFC Championship game in San Francisco. When he had a chance to win the game in these big games, he did.
He’s either the greatest actor in the world or just his mentality just to keep doing what he does every day. He never got emotional about it. Winning, losing, he just kept practicing and playing. That in itself is pretty amazing, no matter what market you’re in, to answer questions and not have a moment where you just kind of snap back or complain about the question. He never did. He was taught well, but that’s kind of who he is, too. I think a lot of professional athletes, quarterback, myself included, probably if you could do it again, I’d try to emulate that more than any other way. Don’t get too emotional, watch what you say, just make every day, have your plan and do your plan and be satisfied, it’s a great way to be a professional athlete.
Daniel Jones has handled everything great. He’s shown he’s very accurate with the football, can get rid of it. Very good decision-maker.
It’ll be interesting to see as a fan how they use him and see if I see a big difference in how they run the offense and play-calling with him in there than they did with Eli. Jones won’t recognize the game he’s going to play in this weekend compared to what he did in the preseason. It’s bigger, faster, rougher, more complicated.
I don’t know if I advice for him. It’s the game of football, and I can just promise him this, we all know this: It’s gonna be fun, it’s gonna be hard, there’s gonna be tremendous adversity.
But the good moments are worth it all.