CHICAGO — Eli Manning, quarterback of the only 0-6 team in football, which means he is the quarterback of The Worst Team in Football until Peyton Manning names his score against the Jaguars on Sunday, was fighting back the tears after Bears 27, Giants 21.
His voice choked with emotion as he stood so lonely on a podium adjacent to a shell-shocked visiting locker room, and he seemed closer to crying than he was on the fourth-quarter interception that cost his team the victory it had so desperately craved, closer to crying than he was on his two first-quarter picks, the second one a pick-six.
“It’s not … not on me, I feel bad for my teammates,” he began. “I feel bad for my coaches, and everybody fighting every day, and … I’m fighting too, I’m trying to get a win for these guys … it’s tough … it’s definitely tough at times when you don’t feel like you’re playing your best.”
When you are The Quarterback of The Worst Team in Football, there is no more fourth-quarter magic in your arm. You begin marching your team down the field from your 11, and you get to the Bears’ 35, and you know you can do this because you have done this twice before in the Super Bowl.
And of course his teammates all believed, because they have seen him rise to occasions like this one.
“Put the ball in our hands, two-minute drill … I mean, you have flashbacks,” Will Beatty said. “That’s the situation that you live for, like we’ll go and win the game.”
Only this time, right before the two-minute warning, you throw a ball too high, barely, for Brandon Myers.
“Obviously threw it a little too high,” Manning said. “Feel like we’re about to go drive to win a game, and I make a mistake.”
He has already made 15 mistakes as the quarterback of The Worst Team In Football.
“I feel like I’m not doing my part … that’s the frustrating part. I feel like our guys are fighting hard, and guys are doing their parts, and I need to start doing mine,” Manning said.
Myers leaped for the ball, a ball Martellus Bennett probably would have caught a year ago, a ball that grazed Myers’ hands and wound up in Tim Jennings’ instead.
“You throw a ball six inches too high, and that’s the difference between possibly winning the game and a loss,” Manning said.
His teammates respect the hell out of him, because of what he has done, and what he stands for.
“I told them I’m going to get better these last weeks, I’m going to start making the plays I need to make, and obviously I need to start doing that,” he said.
The pick-six was a grievous miscommunication between Manning and Rueben Randle, who zigged as the corner jumped the route when Manning thought he would zag.
“We weren’t on the same page,” Randle said.
If misery loves company, Manning has plenty of company. Brandon Jacobs tried to will The Worst Team in Football past the Bears. Perhaps Perry Fewell should have asked Tom Coughlin if he could have borrowed Jacobs on defense in the first half. Because sometimes the Giants resembled matadors tackling bulls, or even bears. Half the time, they didn’t cover. They never rush the passer anymore.
They are The Worst Team in Football because they never play four quarters, they always find a way to lose, they never make the plays that winners make in Winning Time.
For one half, they continued to dishonor the proud football gladiators of yesteryear, they continued to disgrace the Big Blue uniform worn by the Lawrence Taylors and Harry Carsons and Michael Strahans, etc., etc. — and by the time they fixed it for the second half, it was too late.
Used to be New York Giants defense stood for something. Used to be New York Giants defense dictated the terms of the night to the opposing offense. Used to be.
Where have you gone, Bill Parcells and Bill Belichick? Where have you gone John Fox? Where have you gone Steve Spagnuolo?
For the first 30 minutes, they let Jay Cutler smack them around, from pillar to post, and if Coughlin didn’t know any better, he might have thought that was Bill Sheridan coordinating that defense instead of Fewell.
“Trust me, it’s not just Eli,” Kevin Boothe said.
Of course it’s not. But the franchise quarterback can’t save the franchise right now, and feels the weight of the franchise on his shoulders. Because right now, he is the quarterback of The Worst Team In Football.