New York Giants’ quarterback Eli Manning drops back to pass, the pocket is clean and his receivers are just breaking into their routes, but the PTSD ridden signal caller decides to get rid of the ball early, dumping it off to Saquon Barkley underneath.
If you look closer, Odell Beckham Jr., the $19 million per-year receiver, is about to bolt toward the sideline and enter free space, but the ball has already left Manning’s hand, and Barkley has only picked up three-yards. Manning looks down to the ground and shrugs his shoulders as if he didn’t see Beckham streaking into open space.
Has the immense amount of pressure gotten to Manning over the past few years? Have the offensive line woes finally caused him to crumble when it matters most?
He looks scared, if not expecting to have a face full of defensive lineman at any moment, but the line held up on that play, and it went to waste.
From this angle it seems as if head coach Pat Shurmur is off the hook. His quarterback is not waiting for the play to develop, and in turn it’s causing way too many three-and-outs. This isn’t the same signal caller he once had with Minnesota…not a player that can use his legs to escape the pocket or throw on the run with tacklers draped at his feet. This is Manning, a once precision passer with risk taking abilities. He seems to be a shell of what the two-time Super Bowl winner once was, and it seems far more mental than physical.
If you teach a dog to be friendly, why would you expect it to suddenly start attacking people?
Years of hits, pressure, and duress have led to a nimble quarterback; a player that is expecting to be under constraint the very second he touches the ball. Of course he’s going to be terrified, he’s had Ereck Flowers as his left tackle for three years now. Manning can still put some zip on a pass and find a receiver for a completion, but his mental abilities are shot.
Shurmur’s system works, we saw that with Case Keenum, an undrafted quarterback that finished the 2017 season with 3,547 passing yards and 22 total touchdowns. These numbers marked the highest in his entire career, and he topped it off with a completion percentage of 67.6. He had just seven interceptions. This is what Shurmur can do for a quarterback…one that he can mold at least. Manning is an old horse with old habits, there’s nothing Shurmur can do to help him become the passer he wants him to be. That’s why the offense is struggling to a degree that nobody thought was imaginable after the Ben McAdoo era.