Few names make Patriots fans lose sleep at night more than Eli Manning. Without his heroics, Tom Brady potentially could have brought eight Super Bowl championships to New England.
Well, the Foxboro Faithful might have to deal with Eli Manning 2.0 for the foreseeable future.
Here’s what longtime New York Giants center, and current NFL Network analyst, Shaun O’Hara said Thursday when asked how Patriots rookie Mac Jones compares to Manning:
“Very comparable — they wore the same number (10), too,” O’Hara told Tom E. Curran of NBC Sports Boston. ” … I definitely see some similarities there. I think at the line and the mental stuff … that was one of the things that I was so impressed with with Eli coming in. And it wasn’t that, ‘Hey man, he has to learn the offense and also identify defenses. Eli came in as a rookie and he could already identify coverages.
” … It looks like Mac Jones has that mental acuity and that football intelligence. But I think the poise is one thing that you see, and it’s something that you have to be in the huddle with to get that command. Because, as quarterback, that’s where you have to win. You’ve gotta win the huddle before you can win any football game. And that’s something Eli did, and he did it by being one of the guys.”
We’re not going to go down the Manning rabbit hole right now. Some people think the two-time Super Bowl champion stunk; others think he’s a first-ballot Hall of Famer. The truth might be somewhere in the middle.
The reality, though, is that Manning was an above-average NFL quarterback who, at the very least, played his way into a Hall of Fame debate. If Jones amounts to something similar for the Patriots, they probably would be thrilled.
Of course, before Jones can live up to any hype or comparisons, he first must earn the starting quarterback job in New England. His performance during training camp and preseason probably warrants such a move from Bill Belichick, but the Patriots head coach’s feelings on the quarterback competition remain difficult to decipher.
