New York Giants - Fantasy News

Eli Manning Benched as New York Giants Starting Quarterback

by Adam Markowitz

11/28/17

NFL

New York Giants

Eli Manning

Eli Manning’s streak of consecutive starts at quarterback is going to end at 210 games, the second-most in NFL history.

The New York Giants have made the decision to go in a different direction for their last five games of the 2017 season, sitting Manning down and letting Geno Smith and Davis Webb play to see what they can bring to the table.

Manning was offered the opportunity to continue his starting streak, but he was informed that he was going to be taken out of games at some point to let the younger kids play.

Smith is going to get the first shot under center for the G-Men, and the immediate reaction by fantasy players must be that he should be avoided at all costs. The West Virginia product hasn't started a game since last October and hasn't both started and finished a contest since the end of the 2014 campaign.

It's easy to remember Smith being the butt of every joke on the back page of the New York Post when he was punched out in the locker room by a teammate when he was with the Jets, but Smith will tell you that he probably should have been given more of a fair chance to show what he could do. He was the quarterback for a bad Jets team, and he wasn't given much of anything to work with in terms of surrounding playmakers.

Not that these Giants are much better right now than those Jets were then.

Smith, though, has had a few games of note. He threw three touchdowns against Atlanta in his rookie season and did the same to Miami in the last game of the 2014 campaign.

In his 30 career starts, he has completed 57 percent of his throws, averaged 195 passing yards per game and has 28 touchdowns against 35 picks. He only started and finished five games in his entire career without an interception.

Smith, though, has some talent. We know that he is going to rack up a few Dober Fantasy Points with his legs every week, and if he accidentally scores a rushing touchdown as he has done in seven of his 30 starts, he will easily beat his Projected Fantasy Points total.

The problem with the Giants, though, is that you just don't know what's coming next. If a plan was legitimately in place to start Manning, play him for a drive or two, then sit him down, what's to say that the same won't happen to Smith? He's a man who has never really been given a fair shake throughout his entire NFL career, and with a significantly younger Webb waiting in the wings, what's to say that Ben McAdoo won't split the game between his two younger quarterbacks?

The Giants aren't going to break any records on Dober Play Cards for the rest of the season, but they're at least going to be up against pathetically low numbers.

With the news that Manning was being benched, all of the Giants' wide receivers watched their PFP totals drop to 5.0 or below. Sterling Shepard's PFP is set at 11.0 while Evan Engram is at 10.0. Those numbers could tail off substantially in the days to come as confidence in this New York offense continues to wane.

Smith's PFP opened at a paltry 5.5, the lowest for a starting quarterback in the NFL this season.