It’s been a bit over a year since New York Giants quarterback Eli Manning walked away from the NFL. But Manning is still connected with the franchise, and has said earlier this year that he wants to do more with the team. According to a recent report from Gary Myers, that might come in the form of mentoring players.
Giants news: @EliManning told me he stopped by NYG offices last week to say hi to trainers, video people & equipment staff & visited with John Mara. Eli expressed an interest to Mara to work for NYG and they're going to carve out a role. Best guess: Mentoring players. No coaching
— Gary Myers (@GaryMyersNY) January 27, 2021
Manning visited the Giants offices and seemingly had a meeting with co-owner John Mara last week. A possible future role with the franchise was one of the things discussed, but it’s been known for a while that Manning isn’t interested in a coaching role. He’s said as much publicly, and it looks like these future plans match up with that idea.
Previously this year, Manning has also talked about going into TV and doing work with ESPN. But even if he’s set to do a show with ESPN+, it looks like he also has some free time to work on other things.
There’s many players on this Giants team that could use veteran mentoring, of course. The most obvious name is quarterback Daniel Jones, but the Giants have gotten younger in general since the last days of Eli’s time with the team. Many veteran faces departed over those years and many of the current starters for the Giants are draft picks who haven’t been able to seriously experience winning yet.
Playing for an organization with high expectations like this and in a tough city like New York isn’t easy – multiple members of the team would probably appreciate the advice from someone that handled it better than anyone.