New York Giants quarterback change similar to Manning’s rise in 2004

Daniel Jones is replacing Eli Manning as the New York Giants starting quarterback. History has come full circle, it was 2004 when Manning became the starter.

Tuesday, the New York Giants announced, via a press release, that they were going to sit 16-year veteran and two-time Super Bowl MVP Eli Manning this week. Taking his place will be the team’s first, 2019 first-round draft pick (6th overall), Daniel Jones. It’s a controversial move, but it’s not the first time Big Blue has sat a veteran in favor of a high draft choice. Manning got his starting job that way.

Some will draw parallels of the current situation to Manning’s ascension to the starting job in 2004 over Kurt Warner. In some ways, the situations may look similar but the ways they came about are actually quite a bit different. Manning was the consensus top pick of the 2004 NFL draft out of Ole Miss. All along he was adamant that he would not go to the San Diego Chargers who had the number one overall selection, but they picked him anyway.

The G-Men had the fourth overall pick and selected quarterback Philip Rivers from North Carolina State. Their GM at the time Ernie Accorsi had been working with San Diego and had a deal in place. He sent Rivers, the Giants 2004 third-round pick, 2005 first-round pick, and 2005 fifth-round pick to the Chargers in exchange for Manning.*

The franchise quarterback made his first start for Big Blue in Week 10 of the season. After a hot start, the Giants had dropped three of four and were in danger of falling out of playoff contention. Their offense didn’t look good

In nine contests before the switch, Warner had thrown for 1927 yards and passed the 200-yard mark in only four games. Additionally, Warner was getting the snot knocked out of him behind a porous offensive line. He was sacked 39 times including an amazing 24 times in his previous four games prior to the changeover.

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The hits were taking a toll on Warner and he had a history of concussions. This was the future Hall-of-Famer’s only season with the Giants. He was an aging star with an impressive resume, but none of that was done in New York. As great as Warner was coach Tom Coughlin and the organization had no loyalties to him.

Young Eli struggled mightily as a rookie. He lost his first six starts, before finally beating Dallas in the season finale’. Eli finished the year 95-of-197 (48 percent) for 1043 yards, six touchdowns, and nine interceptions. Manning was much better as a sophomore leading the G-Men to an 11-5 regular-season record.

Pat Shurmur is no Coughlin but he had the same hard decision to make. Now the spotlight shines on Daniel Jones. All of New York Giants nation can only hope their new quarterback has a career that is 80% of what Manning had.

*In case anyone was wondering the Chargers did pretty well in the trade. Rivers is an eight-time Pro Bowler. They used the 2004 third-round pick on punter Nate Kaeding, who made two Pro Bowls of his own. The 2005 first-rounder was spent on Shawne Merriman. He was the 2004 Defensive Rookie of the Year and made three straight Pro Bowls from 2004-2007. The final pick of the trade, the Giants 2005 fifth-round pick was traded away to Tampa for former Big Blue offensive tackle Roman Oben, who started all 16 games in 2004 for San Diego.