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Eli Manning Is Key To New York Giants Week 12 Win

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By @mturnerny

Eli Manning New York Giants

Robert Deutsch-USA TODAY Sports

It’s not very difficult to figure out. The New York Giants win with Eli Manning and they lose with him. Two miraculous passes and two just-as-miraculous catches won him and the Giants a pair of Super Bowls. Yet lately the Giants haven’t been playing well, and leading them in that department is their quarterback.

After a miserable 2013 season, the Giants cleaned out their entire offensive staff and brought in a new offensive coordinator. A few games into the season and the Giants finally looked like they were grasping Ben McAdoo’s new system, putting up 30, 45 and 30 points in their Week 3-5 wins. However, those remain their only wins and it appears their offense is regressing.

In their first five games, Manning had a completion percentage of 66.27 percent – very close to the 70 percent McAdoo predicted for him before the season. However, starting with a terrible loss against the Philadelphia Eagles, the Giants started relying on Manning’s arm more and more, and as a result he has only completed 56.85 percent of his passes. That could certainly coincide with the loss of starting running back Rashad Jennings, who went down with a sprained MCL in the Philadelphia game and missed four games.

But Manning has carried this team before. Go look up his 2011 season.

For some reason he’s falling back into his old ways. Giants general manager Jerry Reese wanted him to be more aggressive, and Manning’s throwing the ball way too carelessly now. In his first five games he had a TD:INT ratio of 11:4, and in his last five he has a ratio of 7:6. He’s throwing the ball more and being less effective doing so.

The Giants’ defense kept them in the game this past week against the San Francisco 49ers, holding them to 16 points. In head coach Tom Coughlin’s tenure with the Giants, they’re 61-7 when holding opponents to fewer than 20 points. Manning had plenty of chances to win the game, including a first-and-goal from the four-yard line where McAdoo called three straight fades and one slant in the middle of the field but failed to score. An interception on fourth down ended the drive and the game, for all intents and purposes.

If the Giants look to beat the Dallas Cowboys at home this week, they’ll need a better performance than the 48.89 completion percentage and five interceptions Manning gave them last week. Better play-calling by McAdoo certainly couldn’t hurt, but if Manning doesn’t put the ball in the right location, the play doesn’t even matter. The Cowboys have a pretty good pass defense, and Manning will be forced to make great throws consistently. Luckily Rueben Randle has been playing well as of late, and Odell Beckham Jr. appears to be a budding superstar.

I don’t believe this team has given up on Coughlin, and spoiling the Cowboys’ hopes of a playoff berth sounds like the perfect time for an upset win. As long as Manning can have more scores than turnovers against the Cowboys, the Giants should have a chance of getting the win.

Matt Turner is a New York Mets writer for www.RantSports.com. Follow him on Twitter @MturnerNY, “Like” him on Facebook, or add him to your network on LinkedIn and Google.

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