Eli Manning – Dr. Jekyll or Mr. Hyde?
by Sam Monson
3/9/2008
 
Has there ever been a player in the NFL whose reputation has changed as quickly as Eli Manning's?
 
This time last year he was the reason the New York Giants weren't a Superbowl contender. Six Months ago he was the quarterback who couldn't hold it together consistently enough to ever justify his lofty draft status, and the trade to get him.
 
Then in the course of five games his reputation was transformed. He became the quarterback everybody hoped he would become when they drafted him. He's still not Peyton Manning, and probably never will be, but he has a different style. He gets the wins by guts and coming through when it matters. Remember that play in the Superbowl?
 
Now, heading into the 2008 season, Manning is seen as one of the league's best young quarterbacks, a reason to be optimistic for Giants fans, and anything but the liability he was this time last year.
 
It's worth remembering before we go overboard on the new and improved Eli, that last season he accounted for 27 turnovers against only 23 touchdown passes (and that memorable one he ran in against the Dolphins at Wembley). His season shook out to a QB rating of 73.9 (That's only 3 points higher than Tarvaris Jackson – this year's question mark player on a good team, widely panned by all for his 2007 performance).
 
Against the Minnesota Vikings, a team that finished dead last in the NFL for yards given up through the air, Manning completed only 17 of his 41 pass attempts, throwing one touchdown but four interceptions, for a QB rating of 33.8. As Neil of ProFootballFocus put it to me, “Most of the time Eli's actually quite good…but when he's bad, he's shocking!” www.ProFootballFocus.com tells a slightly different story to Eli Manning than the standard statistics do, one that hints a little more at the gutsy persona that he claimed in the Superbowl.
 
Unlike conventional statistics, ProFootballFocus analyses each play in a game and gives players an individual grading based on their performance on a play by play basis. In their quarterback rankings, Eli Manning appears significantly higher than he does in a list ranked simply by QB rating, above players like Bret Favre, Jeff Garcia, and Matt Hasselbeck, all of whom are widely considered to have had excellent years.
 
What this suggests is that there's more to Eli's game than simply the numbers, he has a certain extra something at times, and he showed that better than ever with that pass to David Tyree.
 
Even if he did show a way of getting the job done that goes beyond some mediocre numbers, it is impossible to get away from the Rex Grossman levels of inconsistency. Manning had three games in the 2007 regular season with a QB rating over 100. He also had three games with a rating under 45.
 
Then he went on the run that made everybody in the NFL world change their opinion of him. Starting with taking the Patriots down to the wire and posting a QB rating over 118, Manning led the Giants to four playoff victories, throwing six touchdowns, and only one interception, and posting a QB rating of 95.7 for the playoffs.
 
Though five games is a world away from a full season, and even further short of the several seasons of sustained quality play that someone with the surname Manning needs to produce, it does show he is capable of doing it on a prolonged basis, and only raises a further question mark over the rest of his season. Did Eli Manning really just 'get it' one cold night in December?
 
If Eli Manning really is to prove himself as one of the best young quarterbacks in the game, and to earn his name as a Manning quarterback in his own right, he's going to have to start this season the way he left the last one. He can't afford to lapse back into his old ways of inconsistent play, albeit with some clutch performances along the way.
 
The New York Giants have seen enough of Mr. Hyde, they need Dr. Jekyll working the controls for them to have any chance of defending their Superbowl come January.