Eli Manning Says He Had Bad Habit of Forcing Passes To Veterans

Eli Manning has been on a tear these past few seasons, and right now he leads the league in passing yards with 2,109. The New York Giants will throw for chunks of yards regardless who his receivers are and who’s covering. The Newark Star-Ledger is reporting that Manning credits that to being a more relaxed quarterback, and not feeling like he has to force the ball to a specific veteran receiver. “As a quarterback you always want to trust your guys and I tell them that I don’t have favorites, I’m not going to force it to one guy,” Manning said. “I’ve got a read and a progression. If you want to know what my progression is, I’ll be happy to tell you. And I’m going to stick to that. If you’re my first read, it’s your job to get open. If you’re not, then I’m going on to the next guy. I’m going to stick to those progressions and have faith that if you’re the first read that you’re going to get open for us.” Manning admitted that early on in his career, he would try to force the ball to a veteran like Plaxico Burress, Jeremy Shockey or Tiki Barber to appease them. That way of passing came with mixed results, mostly ending bad for young quarterback. Manning is the leader of that Giants’ offense now and only has to appease himself. “I think early on we probably had receivers who in practice, you’d try to force them to get them balls so they don’t get down or you keep them happy, and I think you create bad habits doing that,” Manning said. “As I got older and we got younger, new guys in, it evolved to doing it the correct way, going through the reads, saying you’ve got to earn the right to get open. It’s all based on the coverage and on the reads and I’ve got to do that to make sure I’m doing the right things and not getting into bad habits.” The post Eli Manning Says He Had Bad Habit of Forcing Passes To Veterans appeared first on FootBasket.