Personally, I don’t care whatsoever whether you’re the kind of person who thinks Eli Manning should not be in the Pro Football Hall of Fame or you’re a New York Giants fan.
This has been and will continue to be the most tired argument in the modern history of the Hall—one we could see coming like a black tornado over quiet midwestern landscapes. And while I credit the voters for tightening their standards and maintaining their objectivity in what I imagine was a difficult position, the Manning/Hall of Fame argument is so ridiculous because it’s ultimately meaningless.
Certainly, we should devote time to occurrences in life that are important to us, but we all know the truth: Manning will eventually be a Hall of Fame quarterback. Arguing that he should remain out of the Hall year after year is akin to suggesting that the Prince of Wales shouldn’t ascend to the throne upon the death of King Charles. It’s going to happen, and the Manning family is as close as we can tangibly get to modern NFL royalty.
Though there is a process at stake that can safeguard the Hall from becoming a museum of the milquetoast and semi-extraordinary, Manning remains a media behemoth alongside his affable brother (and current Hall of Famer) Peyton. Manning has won two Super Bowls for one of the league’s blueblood franchises. He is a draw, which, at the end of the day, has to somehow bleed its way into the process of a private business trying to modernize and continue to make the Hall a destination. Couple that with the fact that an easily summarized résumé of his stands up firmly to some of the more decorated but less prolific passers in the Hall currently, and you have a glaring inevitability.
While I covered the leaner, post–Super Bowl years of Manning’s run in New York, I find it nearly impossible to wade into this conversation with any zeal. Defenders of Manning will point out that, like Dan Marino, he would be one of two quarterbacks to enter the Hall of Fame who never targeted another Hall of Famer as a teammate (with one more good season, DaVante Adams sneaks into the top-20 all-time receivers in yardage and would almost certainly find his way in after the Torry Holt–Steve Smith–Reggie Wayne contingent, taking Aaron Rodgers off the list despite his not-so-hidden agenda of pointing out his lack of first-round support over the years). However, that discounts the true excellence of receivers such as Victor Cruz, Hakeem Nicks, Mario Manningham and Odell Beckham Jr. at the absolute height of their powers.
Defenders will point out his two Super Bowl MVPs (and that he is now one of two quarterbacks, alongside Jim Plunkett, to have won two Super Bowls but not been enshrined in the Hall) while failing to mention the absolutely monstrous defensive game plans of Steve Spagnuolo and Perry Fewell—and the team’s brilliant cadre of safeties and pass rushers, perhaps one of which should have been in consideration for a game MVP when the greatest quick-release quarterback ever was sacked five times in that game. No one outside of the committee claiming objectivity is truly so.
Given the time we currently live in, watching a quarterback like Patrick Mahomes so singularly dominate the league after Tom Brady had the run of the NFL for almost two decades, the most impressive part of Manning’s candidacy to me is that Manning, especially in the second game, was a formidable counterpart to the greatest quarterback of all time. In our contemporary era, we’ve watched a handful of excellent quarterbacks unable to wedge their way past the Kansas City Chiefs’ machine. Kyle Shanahan, arguably the most influential coach of this era, has had all of his defining Super Bowl moments come against either Mahomes or Brady, illustrating just how difficult it is to win a game
Add that in with the fact that Manning is 11th all time in passing yards, 10th all time in touchdowns, seventh all time in completions and, as I’ve made the case prior, his interception numbers are not an indictment to me because Manning tended to throw picks late in games and down two-plus scores more than other quarterbacks and you have a perfectly sensible case for enshrinement at some point.
But even that is giving the argument too much intellectual firepower. Again, I don’t want my thoughts to be misconstrued as a shot at the Hall of Fame or to suggest that any of its voters are in some way tied into the business. I think the current Hall-of-Fame voting group, with a foothold not only in the current, more analytical climate and a critical connection to the game’s past and knowledge of players we cannot track with an EPA rating, may end up being the last bastion of sanity when it comes to an important part of the game we all love.
And, really, we should credit them for a willingness to wade into controversy in the first place. There is absolutely a delineation between first and non-first ballot, especially if we ultimately follow the suggested Deion Sanders path of separating the game’s small handful of transcendent greats from the rest of the inductees. Manning told Yahoo Sports hours before the decision that it didn’t matter what year he made it in, though I imagine voters were well aware of the fact that this year’s class will be recognized at a Super Bowl played around the corner from Manning’s place of birth. Having Manning inducted the same year as Sterling Sharpe would also give the league its first tandem set of brothers to be inducted during the same ceremony.
However, none of it will matter. Manning will get into the Hall of Fame. When he does, acting like he was entitled to a first-ballot entry will seem just as silly as those who wanted him to never get in at all. On both sides of the dividing line, it’s time to prepare accordingly.
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This article was originally published on www.si.com as Eli Manning’s Hall of Fame Enshrinement Is Inevitable.
