HE doesn’t have tattoos all over the place or bulging biceps like Jeremy Shockey does, and we don’t see him chinstrap to chinstrap with snarling defenders the way Phil Simms used to be with Ronnie Lott and the late Reggie White, and we have yet to hear him tell the trainer, “If you take me out, I’ll kill you,” and then pack mud up his nose to stanch the bleeding like Johnny Unitas did once. But the way Eli Manning fights now to be there for his battered team and his 0-1 teammates Sunday at 1 against the Packers, the way he admirably shoulders the burden of the franchise quarterback, ought to be enough even for New York to understand that you cannot tell this skinny, stoic book by its cover.
“I’m not trying to prove a point or show any toughness,” Eli told The Post yesterday. “I’m just trying to get ready to play a game.”
I said to him: “So people shouldn’t count you out?”
Eli Manning said: “I wouldn’t.”
Neither would Favre.
“I think he is a real tough kid, he has a good bloodline, and he’ll be fine,” Favre said.
Neither would his Giants teammates.
“I mean, this past weekend, we didn’t even know he was hurt, we didn’t even know anything was wrong, and he came back in and threw a touchdown pass,” David Diehl said, and chuckled. “People saying just because he’s not a loud guy and all that type of stuff, it doesn’t take away from the guy he is and the character and the toughness that he has.”
Diehl was asked if he would be surprised if Eli wasn’t out there Sunday.
“If he wasn’t there on Sunday,” Diehl said, “it would mean that there’s something wrong.”
It isn’t the fact that older brother Peyton has started 145 consecutive games, or that he has started 40 consecutive games for the Giants, or that this is the home opener against Brett Favre, who has started 238 consecutive games.
“It’s not the fact that it’s the home opener, you just want to be out there for every game,” Eli said. “You only get so many of these. Every game’s important and you gotta try to win.”
Even with a painful contused right AC joint, even as novice Jared Lorenzen practices with the first team, Eli hopes against hope that the doctors and Tom Coughlin will listen if and when he tells them he just wants the damn ball.
“He [the doctor] doesn’t know how I feel or what I can do or what it feels like when I’m going through my workouts and my routines and rehab,” Eli said, “so it’s just a matter of whether he thinks I can make all the throws and do everything and be in a position to be successful in playing on Sunday.”
Eli was asked how inclined he might be to try to throw as late as Sunday morning in an 11th-hour effort at convincing any reluctant medical team to let him try to play. “Talking to the doctors, it’s all based on how I feel, and what I think I can do,” he said.
Oldest brother Cooper recalls Eli suffering a knee injury that was supposed to shelve him for Mississippi’s next game and did not. “I think Eli’s plenty tough,” Cooper said yesterday. “If he thinks he can help the team win, he’ll play. If he thinks he can hurt the team, he won’t play.”
Cooper was asked about Eli’s pain tolerance. “I think he can tolerate a lot of pain,” Cooper said. “He’s less likely to share any emotions with anyone, whether he’s extremely excited or absolutely miserable. I think he’d be a tough read – which is just the way he likes it. At the same time, it seems to frustrate a lot of people, which he finds very amusing.”
He’s dying to frustrate the Packers.
“You can count on him,” Cooper said, “on and off the field.”