I hate the QB rating system. It only takes into account passing and that’s just a part of what Manning excels at. His ability to make adjustments to calls and alignments at the line are second to none, including his brother. He is every bit as important to the run game as he is to the passing game. If you take into account that he improves every year in the passing game, I think the “ceiling” term has no place in this conversation. Now that he has no single receiver to bias his check downs to, I think this will improve his game by letting him have an even set of options.

As far as the comparisons are concerned, Romo should not even have come up unless this guy has some kind of crush on him, Aikman was terrible until they brought in the talented receivers and beefed up the line and Peyton Manning is in a passing style offense, so the stats will never compare. Could he improve on his accuracy? Absolutely and we all know he will. Will Gilbride ever be the right guy for this offense? That’s still yet to be seen as we really don’t know if the success we have had is because of him or in spite of him. It could be that Eli has righted all the wrongs of KG to all reasonable expectations, but you’ll never hear him say it.

All in all, I believe this kid is the best QB we could have for THIS team.

while i appreciate the effort to eschew intangibles, 6 games an adequate sample size doesn not make.

the ‘eli will struggle w/o plax’ seems to be the lazy writers arguement this off season. here are some much better stats from Football Outsiders for all QBs last year, since QB rating is an awful metric.

http://footballoutsiders.com/stats/qb

Eli was both 9th in the league in their total counting stat, DYAR, and their rate state, DVOA, also ahead of romo is both. with only half a year of plax eli had a much better year than in 07, when he had a full year of mr burress. so not the worst analysis, just not a good one either.

ken is exactly right and not only is too small of a sample size to say Eli is not the same QB without Burress, but he will now have a whole offseason and season to prepare for life without him. The offense will be more balanced, Eli will not lock into Plax for a whole play, and it will help him greatly to spread the ball around.

That being said, I don’t really think that Eli will become much more accurate (as others have said here). In my mind 60% is pretty darn good for Eli after seeing him throw for 6 years. I still feel he needs a jump ball guy and we’ll just have to wait to see who fills that role. I think they have enough guys on the team that have the potential to do it and someone will fill the void.

As for Eli in the winds, I think a combination of Eli improving his spiral on those days and better play calling will fix that problem. This is where I think Eli needs to step it up and figure it out.

but how much of this do you suppose gets back to Eli’s ears? He’s had to have heard the drumbeat of “can’t do it without Plaxico” for months now. How much has the current receiving corps heard that they are an inferior group without Plaxico? This is all just fuel for thier fire.

Having said that, when I watched those last six games I didn’t really say to myself “Boy, Eli looks really lost out there today.” It was more like “Man, there is nobody open out there in the flats. They should really try running some deeper post routes to pull the safeties back.”

As Ed pointed this out to begin with, IMO, it’s laughable to the point of BS. OK, everyone harp’s on Eli’s inconsistencies etc…, but for what matters, he consistently get’s the Giants to the PO’s with a SB win. Eli and Romo shouldn’t even be considered in the same sentence at this point!

Now, what does Bowen do in his Dallas write-up, he moreless is sizing Romo up to Peyton, Brady and Brees? Only on the fact, that if Dallas starts winning more, then you can put Romo up there! Statistically, Romo is near that plateau granted that, but were not talking about fantasy are we? Were talking about the intangibles that translate not only to victories, but the PO’s and the SB. Romo, again, shouldn’t even be considered amongst those player’s either, well, maybe Brees!

I’m not saying Eli should be in the same equation as his brother or Brady (statistically), but for what matters the most (SB’s), he should atleast get a nod over Romo for that fact and not to be put into a lesser category. To be fair, until Romo does anything, he might as well be compared to his own backup, Kitna!

There’s no denying Eli was not as good without Plaxico. The Romo comparison doesn’t make sense but I watched a lot of Giants games last year … A fair statement is that Eli was not as good without Plaxico… a 1-4 record should be enough evidence besides the mediocre stats.

Eli’s play has always waned at the end of the regular season. In the last three years he has a QB rating of 68.6 in December games compared to an 88.4 in September. While this in itself might be a red flag it can certainly deflate the notion that he needs Plax.

No one, not Peyton or anyone else, could have played well in last year’s Tornado Bowl. McNabb played just as poorly as Manning did in the swirling winds.

Bowen’s little stat sheet conveniently fails to mention the games against Seattle and Arizona that were played without Plaxico (he left the Arizona game very early without catching a pass). He would have a much harder time making his argument if he included those games in which Eli recorded a passer rating of 136.6 and 127.3.

So by my count, in 8 games without Plaxico Eli had an inefficient playoff game in an awful passing environment, one bad regular season game against the Girls, two mediocre games at the end of the regular season, and four good to great games.

OK, we can all agree that Eli’s accuracy (completion %) isn’t all that impressive. We can possibly, or blantantly blame the Nov./Dec. weather for this. So, is it something that Eli may be doing wrong? All QB’s do have differences in their mechanics which might lead to this or that. But, when i think of Eli, i tend to think he has decent enough arm strength to get the job done.

Now, my interesting thought! Who else has played more games (a QB) at Giants stadium this decade? Chad Pennington! I only thought of him, only because i’m trying to figure out why, Eli may not be so accurate, and i know CP is a very career accurate passer. CP has had to play in the same conditions as Eli has too, so what’s working against Eli that is working for CP? We’ve all heard the expression that CP has a noodle arm, but his accuracy say’s otherwise!

I may be grasping here, but it would seem logical to study how/why CP had success at Giants Stadium. I understand the offensive philosophies will be different, but, any implementation of what worked for him under adverse conditions should or could be explored!

And made a trade for a WR w/ our extra picks.

But Eli is what he is at this point, someone who was largely dependent on Plax; and with no replacement, I would suspect a mediocre season from him…so lets hope the running game is as good as advertised

We have to get a established #1 WR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! For a guy who plays with the kind of WR’s he does he is actuallly very good

There’s no doubt Eli suffered after the suspension, but Plax didn’t play against Seattle and only for one pass that got called back in Arizona. Both were wins, scoring 44 and 37 points, respectively (Eli was 19 -25 for 267 and 2 TDs in Sea and 26-33 for 240 and 3 TDs in AZ). Plax didn’t play against Wash b/c of his sniper actions, and Eli went 21-34 for 300 and 1-1. After clinching Home Field, does anyone really count our throw away game against Minn, w/ the starters only playing for a half and not to get hurt? So while the Giants were 1-4 since Plax’s suspension, Eli was 4-3 w/o him the whole season. Tells a diff story.