LINSANITY!!!

He’s exciting. No, not because he’s Asian, and no not because he went to Harvard; Jeremy Lin is a sensation because he’s one of those talents that’s making everyone say: “Wait what? Where did he come from?”

The Super Bowl has come and gone, but that doesn’t mean the past football season’s events aren’t still poignant in sports pop culture. Now that there’s this spectacular story for basketball, it’s pretty natural for people to try and pair it with a story from the most popular sport in the country. What was the most incredible tale this season? Tebow-Time of course! While Linsanity and Tebow-Time are similar in how marvelous they are, people need to stop comparing Lin to Tebow. Tebow as an athlete broke records in high school in Florida, where he was in the running for National Football Player of the Year. He was a scrutinized recruit going into college and a first-round pick going into the pros.

The amount of scrutiny on amateur athletes increases every year, to the point that it makes me uncomfortable. Earlier this season I read an article about a twelve-year-old basketball player. The scary part was that the article wasn’t in The Washington Post, covering some local kid that’s garnering attention, oh no, it was a national story on ESPN. In basketball, future players are correctly identified in their youth more than in football, baseball, or hockey.

That’s what makes Lin such a story. In the NBA, players just don’t tend to come out of nowhere. Lin’s story is nothing like Tebow’s, where a scrutinized athlete’s unorthodox style of play helped his team win several times in the face of adversity. No, the easiest parallel to draw from the past NFL season to tie to Lin’s success is Victor Cruz. Cruz was undrafted and deep in the depth chart, but got a chance to play due to some management decisions and some injuries (Jeremy Lin would jump in right now saying: “Now that sounds familiar!”). Not only did Cruz succeed, he exploded, immediately becoming one of the most dynamic wide receivers in the NFL.

So please, stop Tebowing to honor Jeremy Lin. Salsa dance instead!

The NFL is a quarterback-driven lead, and that fact is becoming more and more unavoidable with each passing year. No other position receives as much criticism for a team losing, but similarly no other position receives as much credit for a team winning. It frustrates me endlessly when the efforts of other offensive players, or more importantly of defensive players, are all shoved aside to laud a team’s quarterback. Though I now need to rename this phenomenon, I’ve long-considered it the “Eli Effect.”

“But Eli won a championship! He was Superbowl MVP!” I know, without those two facts I’d never dislike Eli as much, nor would as many people continue to place him in company he doesn’t belong. In 2007 the Giants shocked the world to beat the undefeated Patriots. The Giants did this, and Eli was involved, but he was the worst part of that Giants team. Before getting to the Super Bowl, a team has to make the playoffs. The Giants were an excellent team: they were 4th in the country in rushing and 7th in total defense. Unfortunately, the team had a major flaw, as they were the 21st best passing team.

That doesn’t tell the whole story. Eli was tied for worst in the NFL in both interceptions and total turnovers. His yards/attempt on passes was a measly 6.31, which landed him at 28th. Essentially, the great offensive line that kept him from being sacked too many times kept the Giants’ passing game from being very near the very bottom of the league. Almost any other quarterback would’ve allowed the Giants a stronger regular season, luckily they had strength in almost all other aspects of the game to make up for their glaring weakness at signal-caller.

In the playoffs, Eli’s performance improved marginally, but it was still his team carrying the load. The Giants led the postseason in sacks and rushing yards, and in the Super Bowl victory the Giants had more than twice as many rushing yards as New England. The Giants’ defense sacked Brady 5 times and held him to his lowest yardage/attempt of any game across his MVP season.

Is Eli Manning a good quarterback? Yes, now. In 2007 though, the year he won Super Bowl MVP and started entering idiotic discussions placing him with the elite, he was in fact below league averages in every measurable way. Someone asked me if Eli won the Super Bowl this year would I consider him in the top 25 quarterbacks of all time, and I laughed. Eli has made two Pro Bowls, neither of which he deserved (in 2008 Aaron Rodgers clearly deserved it over him, just as Matthew Stafford did this year). Eli has turned into a good leader, and is barking at the door of being an appropriate Pro Bowl selection, but the fact is that never in his career has he had a season where he was one of the top three quarterbacks in his conference, let alone the league.

This year Eli Manning had the best season of his career. He played well throughout and his  team got hot at the right time, and they won a very exciting game last night. I applaud him, and will actively search for a new player to rename this phenomenon. But the fact that Eli has now arrived doesn’t make any person that has been lauding him for years more right. He’s just finally grown into a good quarterback.