16 years and two Super Bowl titles later and the Eli Manning era as the Giants starting quarterback has come to an end. Rookie QB Daniel Jones takes the reigns on Sunday when the Giants go to Tampa to play the Bucs.
Mike Francesa opened Wednesday's show reacting to the move after Manning, Jones and head coach Pat Shurmur spoke to the media for the first time since the decision was made on Tuesday. Francesa is not a fan of what the Giants franchise has become and how they handled this entire QB saga.
"The Giants have become chronic losers," Francesa said on WFAN. "They can't get out of the rut. That's what they have become. They have right before our eyes gone from being classic winners to chronic losers. They do all the things now that chronic losers do. Blame. Make rash decisions. Go one step one way and one step the other way. Have no direction and no clue. That's where they are right now as an organization ... an organization that is rudderless, an organization that is directionless, an organization that doesn't have an idea what they're doing."
Manning is getting $23 million to now be the mentor and clipboard holder for the remaining 14 games of the season. With plenty of holes on defense and not a lot of targets on offense, the Giants could have undoubtedly used that money elsewhere.
"If they had an idea what they're doing, they would have never brought Eli back this year," Francesa said. "It was a colossal waste of time and money, because we all knew that once they drafted a quarterback sixth, it was going to be his game. The coaches after Coughlin, McAdoo and now Shurmur, as soon as they started losing here, they want a modern quarterback. The quarterbacks that stay in the pocket are a dying breed in this league. Everybody wants mobile quarterbacks and to run the same stuff that they are running everywhere across the league, because it's a copycat league. So you want mobility in your quarterback and unless you're Tom Brady and a couple other guys are still hanging on late in their career and still winning okay, but if you're not winning, they're going to want to move to the mobile quarterback."
Jones has some mobility and will clearly run more than Manning did, which was almost never.
"You're not going to see a different Giants offense. You're going to see him actually run a little more, because this is a 22-year-old quarterback, not a 38-year-old quarterback," Francesa said. "Plus that 38-year-old quarterback never beat anybody with his legs. He beat them with his heart. He beat them with his arm. Daniel Jones is not going to beat a whole lot of people from what I have seen with his legs either, but he's more mobile than Eli, but so is a lamp post."
The Giants are 0-2 and have got clobbered the first two weeks of the season by the Cowboys and Bills. The defense has been very bad and the offense has left much to be desired. While it isn't exactly Manning's fault for their struggles, Shurmur will see what they have in their first-round pick as they try and determine if he is the heir to the thrown for Big Blue behind center.
You can listen to Francesa's entire opening monologue from Wednesday's show in the audio player above.
