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IBEFORE HE WAS A STAR … Eli Manning (above) was a talented quarterback at the Isadore Newman School in New Orleans. (The Times-Picayune /Landov)
There was a buzz that night at Bess P. Harvey Memorial Stadium in Lafitte, La., and not simply because the Fisher High School Gators were hosting their neighbors from New Orleans, the Isidore Newman School. Word had spread that seven members of the visiting Greenies would be suspended for that night’s game, necessitating a raid of the junior varsity roster.
Up from the JV came a skinny freshman quarterback whose first name wasn’t yet prominent in the minds of the locals but whose surname surely was. He was still almost exclusively known as Peyton’s kid brother then. Or Archie’s youngest son. He was 14 years old, Opie Taylor in cleats and shoulder pads.
“He was about 6-2 and 150 pounds,” Derek Victory said with a chuckle the other day, recalling the kid who added another two inches and 70 pounds over the years to grow into the Eli Manning currently serving as New York City’s pre-eminent toast of the town. “He looked like a big old sapling.”
Victory had no idea that he was about to become a future candidate for a Trivial Pursuit question that night. He was a solid 6-foot-1, 180-pound junior who played both ways for the Greenies but was an especially gifted receiver. Two years earlier, as a freshman himself, he’d been targeted a few times by Newman’s senior quarterback, so with a few balls from Peyton already under his belt, he was about to become the first player ever to catch passes from both Manning brothers.
“Everyone was in awe of Peyton, as you can imagine,” Victory said. “And he was so intense, you knew if he threw you the ball you had to catch it because the reason he threw to you is that he’d made the decision that you were his best option. Eli — and I know this is no surprise — was a lot more easy going. But he could throw it, too. Even then.”
Long before he would discover the splendidly inviting targets of Hakeem Nicks’ freakish hands, on an evening, Oct. 13, 1995, when Victor Cruz was still a month shy of his ninth birthday, Eli Manning would sample for the first time the powerfully addictive skill of dropping a ball into a receiver’s arms for a touchdown and hearing a crowd react instantly.
That came in the first quarter, a 19-yard strike, Manning-to-Victory (which sure sounds like the title of an as-yet-unproduced DVD). Newman would win the game 35-13, and the frosh’s varsity cameo couldn’t have gone any better: five completions in eight attempts, 70 yards. You might say he managed quite a game that night.
Funny thing, though: Victory doesn’t remember many of the details from that night. For one thing, there were no grand pronouncements on the Newman team bus that the Future Is At Hand, and little understanding just how good Eli — or Peyton for that matter — was going to be.
“They were just the kids we grew up with, you know?” said Victory, who went on to study engineering at Vanderbilt and is now an entrepreneur with a specialty in start-up companies living in Austin, Texas. “Even now, if we passed each other on the street I’d be like ‘Hi, E, hi, Peyton’ and they’d say hi back and it wouldn’t be a big deal, just a couple of old friends running into each other.”
There was also this: Victory wound up catching a lot of passes from Eli in the year following that debut. Knowing he would be the likely starter as a sophomore, Eli and Victory worked out daily at Tulane University all summer, Eli throwing 50 balls a day at his favorite receiver. The work paid off. As a sophomore, Manning threw for 2,229 yards and 24 touchdowns; his senior running mate was responsible for 947 of those yards and 13 of those TDs. They both made All-State.
“I knew I was playing with a terrific quarterback,” Victory said. “Though I’d be lying if I said I knew how good.”
Eli knew he was playing with a pretty good player, too. In November, Victory was home for Thanksgiving and attending the Giants-Saints game at the Superdome when his cell phone began to blow up with texts and voicemails.
“Dude!” came one of the frenzied messages, “Mike Tirico just mentioned you on TV!”
Manning had told the ESPN announcer about his favorite high school target when he’d been asked about playing his old man’s old team in his old town, and that made perfect sense, of course. You never forget your first wingman.