NFL Open Thread: Eli’s Going

I should be well-positioned to write a contrarian take defending the most controversial act of Ben McAdoo’s second and last season as an NFL head coach, and I’d love to given the overwrought outrage of the New York media. I believe in unsentimental personnel management, Eli is old and now a below-average QB, the Giants are going to draft a new QB and move in in 2018 anyway. And yet…I can’t defend the move, which it’s hard to see as anything but pointless and mean-spirited scapegoating. If Webb looked really good and you wanted to play him, maybe, but for Geno Smith? I don’t see how that helps the Giants on any time horizon. And it looks even worse given McAdoo’s rather gross attempts to blame Eli for his own incompetence earlier this year. (You could say McAddo’s mistake was not playing Webb, but given that the Giants have no o-line or running game and their best wideout is hurt, that has Nate Peterman Part Deux written all over it.) The play here is what Mara apparently originally wanted — start Manning, and look over Webb and/or Smith if game(s) aren’t close in the second half, which is highly likely.

Meanwhile, in other QB follies John Elway, libertarian SUPERGENIUS, has somehow managed to create a situation in which Trevor Siemian is by far the best QB on the roster. I blame it on players today getting soft. And, hey, they may well win this week anyway, because Adam Gase — Ben McAdoo with a better haircut — is going to keep trying to make Jay “When I said I retired I meant it” Cutler a thing.