Eli Manning catches footballs at practice as Giants move on with Geno Smith
Eli Manning normally has a Giants staffer or a teammate catch the football and hand it to him when he warms up his throwing arm before practices or games. It’s a common perk of being the starting quarterback in the NFL. No reason to risk a jammed finger while grabbing for a returned pass.
On Wednesday, though, Manning had to catch his own football. Geno Smith and Davis Webb had the caddies.
And so it goes with the subtle differences as the Giants make a franchise-shaking transition this week from 210 straight regular-season weeks with Manning as their starting quarterback to Sunday’s game with Smith in that role.
There were other differences, of course. Smith took the first rep with the team in its jog-through, and Manning was with the second team. And after the portion of practice that is open to the media was closed, there were certainly more concrete changes in the way reps and responsibilities were divvied up.
While the change at quarterback created tumult on the outside, inside the team the players seemed to be handling it much better.
“Eli getting benched is not saying he’s a garbage quarterback,” Jason Pierre-Paul said in the locker room on Tuesday. “[Manning] hasn’t missed a start since he’s been here. I understand that it’ll be hard for him, but Geno is going to take the snaps now. I think it’s a good thing because we’ll see what Geno has and Eli can stay healthy. He’s a great quarterback. He’s not benched because he [stinks]… I think it’s good protection. It’s insurance, basically.”
While some players sensed the gravity of the change — rookie Davis Webb was chief among them, calling it a “sad day” throughout the building and publicly touting Manning’s place on the “Mount Rushmore” not only of Giants history but in New York sports — others seemed to roll with and almost welcome the decision.
“There wasn’t really a reaction,” wide receiver Roger Lewis said of the team’s response to Ben McAdoo’s announcement on Tuesday. “I believe in all of our quarterbacks and I feel like any of them can get the job done. So just go to work . . . Geno said he’s ready, he’ll be in all the receivers’ ears this week. It’s nothing different from any other week. It’s the same. He’s been preparing to play all season, so it’s nothing new.”
McAdoo predicted that the players would respond as such.
“I think that players in this league understand that their job is on the line each and every time they take the field,” he said on Tuesday. “They understand how precious reps are. They understand how precious games are. They know that they could lose their job at any point in time and I think most of them can relate to what Eli is going through.”
After 14 years, though, this isn’t just a regular benching that happens all the time.
“It’s something new,” defensive tackle Jay Bromley said of the quarterback change. “We’ve been bad before and I don’t know if that’s ever happened . . . We’ll have to see [what happens]. I hope [Geno] goes out there and plays great.”
Tom Rock began covering sports for Newsday in 1996 and became its NFL columnist in 2022. He previously was Newsday's Giants beat writer beginning in 2008.
