Kurt Warner knows a thing or two about a young quarterback taking his spot in a Giants uniform. Eli Manning replaced Warner during the season in 2004 and would be the Giants starter for the next 15 years.
The Hall of Fame QB and NFL Network analayst joined WFAN's Mike Francesa on Friday to talk about what Manning is going through.
"I know it's killing Eli, but as you know and I know with Eli, he's nothing but class. He's going to carry himself with class, and he's going to do a great job of helping Daniel in any and every way that he can," Warner said.
"Probably the hardest thing for me was going through the week and running scout team. You have accomplished so much in this business and you're kind of relocated to I'm going to hold up a card and we're going to circle a guy and you got to drop back and throw it to that guy to give your defense a look. That was the hardest part. What you love is competing. It didn't matter if it was practice or Sundays, you wanted to compete. When that was taken away from you, A) the Sunday afternoons and B) almost on a daily basis, every time you stepped in the facility ... that was the most difficult part. You know you could still play and you just want to go out and compete and do what you have been doing for a number of years, especially a guy like Eli who knows the end is much closer than the beginning. You hate that you have to go through moments where you don't get a chance to be out there competing and being a part of a sport you love."
Daniel Jones took over for Manning and was masterful in his debut in Tampa, leading the Giants to a 32-31 win over the Bucs. What did Warner think of the rookie's performance?
"It was one of the cleanest games I've seen from a starter this season," Warner said. "Do you see the field? Do you make the right decisions and the right reads with the playcall you have? I thought he was tremendous at that. I thought he made the right decisions. He did the right thing with the football. He made some big-time throws. I thought he played a really clean game from a decision making standpoint, which is really hard to do no matter what, no matter how long you have played in the business, but in his first start was pretty impressive.
"The big question was how is he going to make this offense better than Eli, because I think they still play the game very similarly like they are going to win inside the pocket. Even though Daniel is a much better athlete, he doesn't play necessarily as an athlete, he plays as a passer. But what he did in that game, there was a number of times there was pressure in the pocket and he was able to just simply slide and move away from the pressure eyes down the field and he made three or four huge plays down the field simply by sliding away from pressure that I don't know if Eli would have been able to do. It probably would have been a sack, put them behind the sticks, where Daniel turns those into big plays and game changing plays for them. I thought that was the biggest difference offensively in what Daniel did as to what they had in Eli at this stage of his career."
You can hear the entire interview with Francesa and the HOF QB in the audio player above.
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