Before he was Eli Manning, two-time Super Bowl MVP quarterback, before he was one-time Super Bowl MVP, back when he was a famous player but not nearly a great one, back when there was every reason to wonder what legacy he would leave behind, Manning shared.
It is one of his most underrated assets. As he mastered his position, he quickly realized it would do him no good if those around him, even the roster bottom-feeders, did not know what he knew.
“I came from Denver, my first day of practice, know none of the plays,’’ receiver Domenik Hixon said yesterday, recalling a day in October of 2007. “I ran a route and Eli came, pulled me to the side and said ‘This is what I’m expecting.’ I kind of was like ‘Wow.’ I’m the last guy on the depth chart at receiver but just in case I ought to know what to do.
“He does that with everybody. He coaches everybody so everybody kind of gets that same deal. I talked to guys with a lot of teams, just that one person gets coached. Not here.’’
It is another trying week for the Giants. Giants’ receivers, Victor Cruz says, are “dropping like flies’’ and they are only a few days removed from a calamitous loss to the hated Eagles, sealed when a pass Manning shouldn’t have thrown turned into an offensive pass interference penalty on a receiver, Ramses Barden, who came out of the game with a concussion.
It is after such games, during such weeks when the Giants come to rely on Manning, the weeks that separate teams into two distinct groups: Those that have a franchise quarterback and those that do not. Manning already this season has helped Barden look like a ball-snatching gazelle and last week Hixon might as well have been on a pogo stick as he leaped around for 114 receiving yards. Eli can’t throw to himself and that intangible trait the special ones have — making those around them better — is alive and well in the Giants’ No. 10.
The timing might seem off for an Eli Appreciation Essay, coming off a game in which his offense produced only 17 points, a game in which he threw a regrettable end-zone interception and then failed to finish another grand comeback, leading to all sorts of last-minute hindsight angst. It was a game that Tom Coughlin on Monday needed 1,243 words in his opening statement to explain, vamping from frustrated to analytical to introspective to a bit touchy-feely describing his innermost emotions.
Two days later, Coughlin even took a poke at himself for all the veins he opened up. “I got in the confession box for you the other day,’’ he said, smiling. “You didn’t buy that either.’’
There’s not much to buy with Coughlin and his quarterback is equally as transparent. Manning prefers to instruct, not scold. The Giants took delight in watching Tony Romo Monday night in a five-interception implosion, featuring a for-all-to-see admonishment of Dez Bryant for not running the correct route after one of the turnovers.
“He’s never done that,’’ Coughlin said of a quarterback pointing the finger. “We don’t do that. It’s no one person to blame, it’s our team.’’
There are screw-ups, but Manning prefers to keep them in-house. “He just comes up and asks me what I was seeing, I tell him, he tells me what he sees,’’ Cruz said. “It’s just a matter of two men talking it out.’’
Manning, shrugging his shoulders, prefers not to dissect his quarterback mojo.
“I don’t like to show up anybody or throw blame on someone else,’’ he said.
Get in a players’ face on the field? “I don’t think I’ve seen Eli do that,’’ Hixon said.
Likewise, you won’t see Eli sprinting into the end zone to join in the celebration after a touchdown, like other more exuberant quarterbacks. He gives a pump of the fist, sometimes thrusts both arms into the air and then trots to the sideline.
“Captain and two-time Super Bowl MVP, if he was running around and acting crazy and stuff I’m pretty sure we’d be kind of inclined to do that as well,’’ Hixon said. “He’s just … streamline.’’
Streamline. Another word you cannot spell without Eli.
paul.schwartz@nypost.com