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There were very few people that expected Eli Manning to be a QB1 in 2013. There were even fewer that projected such a dramatic decline. At 32 years old Manning threw 50% more interceptions than touchdowns, and threw for his lowest yardage total since 2008. After 8 straight seasons performing as QB14 or better he finished as QB21 behind Alex Smith, Carson Palmer, and Geno Smith. But QB21 doesn't define just how bad Manning's season was. Since 1980 Manning was just the fourth quarterback to throw 550 passes and score less than 240 fantasy points.
YEAR |
NAME |
ATT |
FP |
2013 | Eli Manning | 551 | 239.5 |
2003 | Joey Harrington | 554 | 199.4 |
2001 | Jon Kitna | 581 | 200.1 |
1995 | Drew Bledsoe | 636 | 214.2 |
Now that we've established how historically bad Manning was last year, the more important task becomes deciding why. Sure, his 27 INTs were a big part of it, but he threw 25 in 2010 and he finished as QB7. His completion percentage of 57.5% was awful, but better than 2005 (52.8%) when he was QB4. The two stats that are way off from Manning's career norms? He threw only 18 touchdown passes and he was sacked 39 times. In his 8 prior seasons he'd averaged 26 touchdowns and 25 sacks a year. Now it's pretty clear that one of these stats feeds off the other as it's hard to score touchdowns when you're losing nearly 20 yards a game to sacks, so let's start with the offensive line.
The only thing worse than the Giants passing attack was their run game, which probably tells you most of what you need to know about their offensive line. The thing is, it's very possible the Giants offensive line is getting more blame for Manning's failure than they deserve. While their performance against Carolina was tragically bad (7 sacks in 30 Manning drop backs), the rest of the year they were just bad, not awful, in pass protection. Manning also didn't help his line, by holding the ball too long on a fair percentage of his sacks. As was the case with Manning's 4 interception game against the Broncos, his failures were far more often related to the game script or miscommunications with his receivers...at least when they weren't entirely Manning's fault.
The holes that Manning found himself in can certainly explain some of his interceptions. I'll even buy that Rueben Randle ran more than a couple of incorrect routes. Even considering those things (and the Giants subpar offensive line play) I was astounded by the number of bad decisions and throws that Manning made when I went back over the tape. He looked to me like a quarterback that knew his team needed more from him but just didn't have the ability to deliver. He's never been a terribly accurate quarterback and he's always struggled with interceptions. What we saw last year was those qualities being magnified by the lack of help Manning received. Of course that begs the question; do we have any reason to expect any better in 2014?
After determining that a large percentage of the blame fell on Manning's shoulders I tried to look some historical comparisons. The problem is that there are very few successful quarterbacks to have a season as bad as Manning did this late in his career. The best comparison is Joe Theismann's 1981 season when he completed 59% of his passes and threw 19 touchdowns and 20 interceptions. Theismann had the two best years of his career after that dud, at age 34-35. The aging of quarterbacks has improved greatly since that time, so there's really no reason to believe that Manning's terrible 2013 means he's done as a successful NFL quarterback. What will have a much larger impact on his future than his age will be the team the Giants put around him.
The obvious change in the Giants skill position players has been Hakeem Nicks out and Rashad Jennings in. Swapping a wide receiver for a running back doesn't exactly sound like it will be great for Manning, but it could be. Nicks was a shell of his former self last year, and if Rueben Randle can continue to develop, and another wide receiver can step up it's possible that Nicks' departure could be addition by subtraction. More importantly, if Jennings (along with an improved offensive line) can revitalize the running game that would certainly take some of the pressure off of Manning.
The fact that we're talking about taking some of the pressure off of Manning does pretty well to explain what I think about him moving forward. A quarterback that struggles to complete 60% of his passes and throws too many interceptions needs to be surrounded by a lot of really good parts. The Giants are a long way from that, but if they make improvements (even marginal ones) he likely will too. If you're expecting (hoping for) a bounceback year from Manning, you need to temper your expectations. Is it possible he could bounce back into QB14-17 range and be a decent backup? Absolutely. Is he ever going to see the QB4-7 range that he reached three times previously? Probably not. There are a lot of things that need to go right for him to be even an average fantasy backup in 2014.
Contact Heath at cummings@footballguys.com or on Twitter @heathcummingssr.