Erosion is no time-lapse event in the hard business of professional football. It happens in an eyeblink, seemingly, because the incremental breakdown in skills is too minute for the naked eye to discern -- at least until it's too obvious for it to miss.
Enter Eli Manning, quarterback, New York Giants.
Who, seemingly very suddenly, can't play anymore.
You never want to put the toe tag on a man's career, because too often the reports of his demise turn out to be greatly exaggerated. So the benefit of the doubt dictates that maybe what we saw from Eli Thursday night was just a bad game from a man playing a good team behind an offensive line that couldn't block a doorway. But somehow it looked like more than that.
It looked like Eli, in his 15th season in the NFL, has lost it the way quarterbacks on his timeline seemingly always lose it: All at once, and sadly.
In a 34-13 loss to the Eagles, he played like the old quarterback he is: Slow and jumpy and uncertain. With no confidence he could make the downfield throws he used to, he constantly dumped the ball to Saquon Barkley, even as his coach, Pat Shurmur, screamed at him to "Throw the ball!" He got caught from behind and strip-sacked. He looked like what so many yapping poodles on sports-jabber radio were calling him Friday: Done.
And if that is so, it's a window into the difference between organizations that win in the NFL, and those that don't.
Those that win think with the head. Those that don't think with the heart.
The Giants thought with their heart last year, jettisoning head coach Ben McAdoo after he did what in hindsight was the head thing to do: Bench Eli Manning. Huge uproar followed, and Manning was promptly restored to what the Giants suits and fandom thought was his rightful place. Not long after, it was McAdoo who was told to grab some bench.
Yet McAdoo was right, of course. He saw through the sentiment and recognized that he had a football team with a juicy array of weapons in the passing game, but no longer had the quarterback who could exploit them. And so he did the hard thing.
And paid for it because his superiors, and a whole lot of Eli-jersey-wearing folks on the street in the city, couldn't see past the two Super Bowls Eli Manning brought to New York. They couldn't, in the end, envision the New York Giants without No. 10 under center.
You know who could have?
The New England Patriots.
Who have become the standard to which everyone else in the NFL aspires because they are cold-blooded SOBs, and we mean that in a good way. Throughout the Belichick era they have become famous, or perhaps notorious, for cutting loose talent long before what most regarded as its expiration date. That said talent might have contributed mightily to a few of the Lombardi Trophies in the Pats' trophy case didn't matter. When it was time to move on -- before it was time to move on, in some cases -- they moved on.
Even the Colts, who have been no one's idea of an efficient organization for much of this decade, made the decision to move on from Peyton Manning at a time when he was still an Indianapolis icon. Some saw that as heartless and crass, particularly the way it was handled. But with Manning's heir apparent waiting in the wings, it was the right thing to do at the right time.
That the Colts have since failed the heir apparent about as clumsily as possible -- and that Manning went on to win a Super Bowl in Denver -- doesn't change the wisdom of turning the page when they did. Within a year or so of landing in Denver, Manning very quickly devolved into a shadow of his Indianapolis self. He was still a high-end quarterback, but he wasn't the old Manning. He was just an old Manning.
As is, suddenly, his brother. And you wonder how all of this plays out had the Giants been more Patriot-like and cut him loose, say, a couple of seasons ago.
Yes, it would have been bloodless and cold-hearted and premature. Or at least it would have looked that way.
And the Giants would today be better off for it.
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