Eli Manning came up short of Pro Football Hall of Fame induction on Thursday night, and as a matter of fact, he wasn’t particularly close.
Manning was not inside the top 10 of voting for this year’s class, which features just four players: Jared Allen, Eric Allen, Antonio Gates and Sterling Sharpe.
The New York Giants legend has been a polarizing figure for the Hall of Fame, even well before he retired. On the one hand, he was never an All-Pro or got an MVP vote. On the other hand, he’s responsible for two of the greatest Super Bowl drives of all time, and he ranks 11th all time in passing yards and touchdowns.
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So, when the committee met, Hall of Fame voter Gary Myers and another New York-based voter made their case, and Myers said the battles are hot.
“I’ve been on the committee for 15 years. Other than the Terrell Owens conversation that we had for three years, this was the most contentious discussion that I’ve been a part of,” Myers said Friday on ESPN New York’s “DiPietro and Rothenberg.”
“I knew there was going to be some anti-Eli sentiment . . . but I was really surprised at the amount of criticism and degrading his accomplishments that went on in that room.”
That criticism, Myers said, was apparent hypocrisy from the other voters.
“What they said, that the Giants defense won those two Super Bowls, but Eli was responsible for only having a .500 record. Voters wanted it both ways. They didn’t want to give Eli credit for beating the Patriots twice in the Super Bowl and having those two-minute drives. They wanted to put it all on the defense. But then, they wanted to say the reason he was 117-117 was because of him, not because it was a team game,” added Myers.
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“My point was, you can’t wait away the credit for the Super Bowls but put the blame of the record on him. . . . To make it seem like the Giants go into those games with a shutdown defense and that Eli was along for the ride, I thought was really wrong.”
Myers also pointed to the fact that Plaxico Burress, who caught the Super Bowl XLII winning touchdown, shot himself in the leg the following season while Big Blue was threatening to go back-to-back with an 11-1 start. They lost in the divisional round that year. He also tried to argue that the front office decisions later in Manning’s career were not beneficial to the quarterback at all.
“His career would’ve looked a lot more differently if he got more support from his teammates, and more importantly, his front office,” Myers quipped.
Myers said he compared Manning to Warren Moon and Dan Fouts, who went 102-101 and 86-84-1, respectively, with zero Super Bowl appearances (Moon never even made a conference title game) and worse counting stats than Manning, mostly across the board, yet were inducted on the first ballot.
“His numbers are superior, and throw in he won two Super Bowl MVPs . . . then what are we doing here?”
It will be tougher for Manning to get in next season. The new rules state that only five people can be elected per year. Drew Brees, Larry Fitzgerald, Jason Witten and other ex-stars are eligible next year, all while Manning will have to beat out finalists from this year, including Luke Keuchly and Adam Vinatieri.
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