Eli Manning walked over to a waiting group of friends and family outside the New York Giants’ locker room, leaned in and gave his wife, Abby, a kiss on the cheek. Abby had vowed years ago after a rough night among the Philly crowd that she would never watch a game in the city again.
However, an exception had to be made. Manning on Monday made his first start for the Giants in three months and there was no guarantee that he would get many more.
“She kind of had to break her rule and come for this one,” Manning said. “I hadn’t played in three months. I don’t know if I’m going to play again.”
Photo: AFP
Manning has fallen from Super Bowl champ to substitute starter, and a couple of early flashes of success against the Eagles could not be sustained in the second half.
The Eagles rallied from a 14-point deficit, and Carson Wentz tossed a two-yard touchdown pass to Zach Ertz in overtime to lead them to a 23-17 win.
Manning grabbed his helmet and went to midfield to shake hands, whisper and smile with Eagles and Giants players before he headed back to the locker room with another “L” on his record — a 116-117 record, but with two Super Bowl championships.
“I didn’t know it, so no thoughts,” Manning said.
The ignominious records have piled up this season for the Giants, who lost their ninth straight game, tying a franchise record set in 1976, when the team opened 0-9.
Manning, who turns 39 next month and is to become a free agent after the season, has not thought much about his future. He only got the start because 22-year-old rookie Daniel Jones, who replaced Manning after Week 2, is out with a high ankle sprain.
It is uncertain when Jones is to return and Manning could finish out the season — so that leaves the question: When will Manning decide if he returns for next season?
“Probably next year,” he said, smiling.
Manning was 15-of-30 for 203 yards and threw a pair of touchdown passes to Darius Slayton, but 179 yards came in the first half. He only completed four passes for 24 yards in the second half, and did little to prove coach Pat Shurmur was wrong to bench him.
“I thought he battled. He did a lot of good things,” Shurmur said.
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier