Final Fantasy: Eli Manning

Welcome to the new off-season series, aptly named ‘Final Fantasy’. In this series, Razzball will be focusing the spotlight on certain players that either exceeded or fell-by-the-wayside of our expectations, and we’ll briefly touch them with our thoughts, legally. Despite rumor (and the series name), we will not be discussing anything +5 to magic missile. Unless there’s actually a NFL player that shoots missiles. And has, like, an amulet to vitality or something like that. Michael Vick’s -98 amulet of dog-caring will be excluded in this particular instance. Regardless, let’s get to the spotlight for today, and that’s Eli Manning.

The New York Giants (offense) really let a lot of fantasy owners down this last year. Actually, pretty much the entire universe. You could look across the board and find disappointment at every offensive position. Let’s start with David Wilson, since I’m a masochist. Only one touchdown and eventually missed 11 games with a neck injury. Next up? Victor Cruz. He only scored one touchdown after scoring three in week one. Then you have Hakeem Nicks, the only player with at least 100 targets to not score a touchdown. Good effort there. And then there’s the last player– Brandon Myers, who had significant regression in catches (47) and yards (522). All of them have a place in this series, but I want to focus on the quarterback, Eli Manning.

Let’s take a look in the 2013 game log:

– Week 1: He threw for 450 yards, four touchdowns and three interceptions.

– Week 2-17 (15 games): 224.53 yards, .93 touchdowns & 1.6 interceptions.

His final numbers in 16 games were 3,818 yards, 18 touchdowns and 27 interceptions. Those numbers placed him as the 21st QB overall in standard (ESPN) scoring. And 521st in my heart.

Just how bad was it for Eli last year? He had five games with no more than 174 passing yards. Outside of week one, he only had two games with multiple touchdowns. He had a tremendous issue with throwing the football to his own team. The cornerbacks wear different uniforms… maybe someone should notify him of this. If you include week one, he had five games with at least three interceptions. Who can’t forget that week 15 game (vs Seahawks)? I bet you he doesn’t. He threw five interceptions, and finished with a total of -4 points in that game. Speaking of single digit (positive or negative) fantasy games, he had seven of them last year. As you can see, this past season was a nightmare (that felt like you could not wake up from) for fantasy owners. And probably Archie.

Outside of week one, in which he finished as the number three quarterback in standard (ESPN) scoring, there was actually one game he had as a QB1. In week 15 vs the Lions, he passed for 256 yards with one touchdown and one interception. You will also see a couple of upper-tier QB2 performances in weeks five and 12. So, not every game was a complete disaster for him… but it so close it didn’t matter.

Since, I have very little positive to talk about this past year. I want to bring to your attention the previous four years. His average stat line is 264.13 yards, 1.76 TDs & 1.09 INTs. Lets dig a bit deeper into these numbers. He had at least 4,002 yards in three of those season, he had no less than 26 touchdowns in all four seasons, and fewer than 16 interceptions in three seasons. Those numbers give you a QB1 in standard (ESPN) scoring.

With a player like Eli Manning coming off of a horrible season, but with a proven track record, I believe there’s the chance to represent a lot of value with a rebound at the quarterback position in 2014.

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