Eli Manning and Philip Rivers do not face each other very often — Sunday’s game in San Diego will be just the third time. Manning played well in two meetings but is 0-2 against the Chargers — losing to Drew Brees in 2005 and Rivers in 2009.
The two always will be linked by the 2004 NFL Draft, when the Chargers took Manning with the No. 1 pick and the Giants nabbed Rivers at No. 4.
Manning said all along he would not play in San Diego — which is why he was booed mercilessly when he played there in 2005 — and, in what will forever be a signature moment in Giants lore, then-general manager Ernie Accorsi engineered a draft-day trade, and Rivers was a Giant for only about five minutes.
In other years, Accorsi told The Post on Tuesday, Rivers would have deserved to be the No. 1 pick in the draft, but not in 2004, not with Manning and Ben Roethlisberger ranked ahead of him.
“I’m not knocking Rivers,’’ said Accorsi, the Giants’ general manager for eight seasons. “He’s had a helluva career. We had them ranked Eli, Roethlisberger and Rivers then, and I would rank them the same now.’’
There is no “what-if’’ scenario to conjure up here, as Accorsi never had any intention of seeing Rivers play for the Giants. He loved Roethlisberger nearly as much as Manning, and if a deal could not have been worked out, Accorsi would have been happy to stay at No. 4 and take Big Ben. As it turned out, he was ecstatic to land Manning.
“Rivers is an excellent quarterback, but we wanted Eli,’’ Accorsi said. “Roethlisberger and Eli have had comparable careers, both have been great. Rivers hasn’t won one yet, but who’s to say he won’t.’’
Rivers this season is the NFL’s sixth-ranked quarterback, completing a league-high 70 percent of his passes. Manning is 32nd out of the 35 quarterbacks ranked, and his 18 interceptions are dangerously close to Geno Smith’s NFL-worst 19.
In a decade’s worth of work, Rivers, statistically, is the better quarterback. His touchdown-interception ratio is 212-102; Manning’s is 226-162. Rivers completes a higher percentage of his passes and actually has won a higher percentage of his regular-season games (60 percent for Rivers, 56 percent for Manning). The career quarterback ratings are 95.6 for Rivers, 82.0 for Manning. The separation — the chasm, in some eyes — comes in the postseason, where Rivers is 3-4 and Manning is 8-3 with two Super Bowl MVP awards.