One of the things Eli Manning said he liked about winning two games in a row was that it eased the speculation about his job security. While the Giants and Manning were playing well against the 49ers and Buccaneers, there were very few questions about whether he should or shouldn't start, very few calls for the team to give the other quarterbacks on the roster a look. All of a sudden there was a division within reach, a Giants team on a roll, and the present was starting to look more important than the future.
Then the Giants lost to the Eagles on Sunday. There were many reasons why, but Manning was one of them. The quarterback cost the Giants points by missing an open target on a two-point conversion, throwing a momentum-changing interception late in the second quarter, calling an ill-advised timeout in the third quarter, and missing Odell Beckham Jr. in the end zone in the fourth (although there should have been a penalty against the cornerback on that last one).
Which brought us to Monday. The return of the big question.
And the resumption of the same answer.
Manning will start against the Bears on Sunday, Pat Shurmur said.
"You go every week with giving your team the best opportunity to win the football game," Shurmur said. "That's how you do this thing. This isn't player tryout. This is do everything in your power to win the next game."
Manning clearly does give the Giants the best chance to beat the Bears (if he can survive their pass rush). But to what end? What would that do other than improve the Giants' record to 4-8 while keeping them in last place in the NFC East? The loss to the Eagles virtually eliminated the Giants from contention. At some point, isn't it time to start thinking about the future?
Even Shurmur admitted that there are short-term and long-term visions at play.
"You're always looking at the big picture," Shurmur said. "There are conversations about that that happen all the time in any organization. You're a big corporation, right? You have short-term gains and where the hell are we going? I'm not foolish enough to think that doesn't happen."
But as a head coach?
"I stay in the moment," Shurmur said.
Manning, of course, is stuck in the middle of all of this.
"I expect to start until I'm told not to," he said on Monday. "I expect to start this week. I expect to play. I'm looking forward to playing. And we'll go from there."
But he also knows that his expectations may not necessarily be those of the organization. Which is why questions to Manning about Manning's future _ for the next month or beyond _ are being asked of the wrong person.
"Hey, I want to play," he said. "Hey, you all can speculate and you all can what-if. It's not my decision."
It's Shurmur's. And he's sticking with Manning. This week. He certainly has the right to change his mind in the closing weeks of the season if the Giants continue to slide deeper into oblivion. And there may be voices from above him who gently nudge him toward making a change, either at starting quarterback or simply by designing situations for the other two to play.
The Giants do not want to repeat the mistakes of last year, when they wasted an opportunity to see what rookie Davis Webb could offer in a game situation. Might Kyle Lauletta, a fourth-round pick _ or, less likely, Alex Tanney, the 30-year-old who has been Manning's backup in each game of the season so far _ be the Giants' long-term solution at quarterback?
"Who knows?" Shurmur said. "Who knows, right?"
There's only one way to find out. And at this point, the Giants aren't doing it.
