Ralph Vacchiano - Eli Manning: The Making of a Quarterback: The Incredible Rise of the New York Giants

WE USED TO joke in the press room at Giants Stadium about who Ernie Accorsi would mention first in his annual pre-draft press conferenceJohn Elway, Bernie Kosar, Bert Jones, or Johnny Unitas. Hed certainly never mention the name of a player in the upcoming draft, but he had a knack for relating almost every question to a story about old timesand old quarterbacksin the NFL.

I dont want Ernie to think that all we did was laugh. I listened and absorbed every old story, and it was from those tales that I got the original idea for this book. Im forever grateful for that, as I am for his brilliantly written foreword and for his willingness to interrupt his retirement to tell me a little more.

Every person quoted in this book deserves to be thanked, along with many other sources that arent named. Im particularly grateful to a couple of former Giants quarterbacks and Sirius radio colleaguesJim Miller and Tim Hasselbeckfor sharing their thoughts and insights of what they saw in Eli up close and behind the scenes. John Mara deserves my gratitude, too, for giving me a peek inside his organization on many different occasions during Eli Mannings career.

When the Super Bowl ended and this book became a reality, it became a mad dash for the finish line. As I researched the details of Elis four-year career I leaned heavily on the reporting of my colleagues at the New York Daily News Rich Cimini, Hank Gola, Gary Myers, and Ohm Youngmisuk. Theres not a finer group of football writers anywhere in the country. The Giants great public relations staffincluding Pat Hanlon, Peter John-Baptiste, and Avis Roperwas also a huge help in quickly getting me the information and interviews I needed. Getting me access to their assistant coaches and team executives while they were busy preparing for the NFL draft was quite a coup.

I owe some thanks, too, to Eli Manning and his entire family, who have been nothing but a pleasure to cover for the last four years. At times, I was one of his critics and his interrogators, not that it ever seemed to matter to him. I even wrote the game story that got the back page headline Eli the Terrible. None of that ever stopped him from being a willing and polite interview subject for me. Ive spent countless hours with him over the course of his career, and hes a true professional who rarely ever leaves before the last question is asked and answered. Clearly the apple didnt fall far from the tree. His father, Archie, and brothers, Peyton and Cooper, are the same way.

Thanks also to my agent, Shari Wenk, who never gave up on a project that started three years ago, and helped push it (and me) along even during those days when the quarterback I wanted to write about hardly seemed worthy of a book. And thanks to the good people at Skyhorse Publishingparticularly my editor, Mark Weinstein and publisher Tony Lyonsfor believing in this project even before Eli won his Super Bowl ring.

Finally, on a much more personal note, writing this book has been the culmination of a lifelong goal, and it never would have happened without the love and support of my mother Carole, my father Ralph Sr., and my sister Janice. There arent enough pages here for me to thank them enough.

And no one deserves more thanks than by beautiful wife, Kara, and my wonderful daughter, Alexandra, for the way they stood by me and supported me, especially during the sprint to the finish. Thank you both for helping make my dreams come trueand I dont just mean this book.

About the Author

RALPH VACCHIANO IS an award-winning sportswriter for the New York Daily News , where he has worked since 1997. The Giants Super Bowl championship-winning 2007 season was his eleventh covering the team (seventh at the Daily News ) and his thirteenth covering the NFL. Hes also a regular host on Sirius NFL radio, where he co-hosts Press Pass . And hes a regular panelist on SportsNet New Yorks Daily News Live .

Born in Brooklyn, New York, and raised on Long Island, he graduated from Syracuse University in 1991 and began his professional career covering the Buffalo Bills for the Niagara Gazette in Niagara Falls, New York. After two seasons there, he spent four years covering the Giants and the NFL for the North Jersey Herald & News in Passaic, New Jersey. In 1997 he was hired by the Daily News to cover hockeyfirst the New York Islanders, then the New Jersey Devilsbefore returning to football in 2001.

He lives with his wife, Kara, and his daughter, Alexandra, in West Caldwell, New Jersey.

One: He did what we drafted him to do

HE HAD SPENT the last four weeks on a scouting trip of sorts, moving from camp to camp, eyeing every elite athlete he could find, looking for that next golden arm. He watched their arm angles and their deliveries. He tried to gauge the zip on their throws, their accuracy, their field presence. He took mental notes at every stop, watched as many games as he could get to, and in all put almost 5,000 miles on his car.

When the scouting trip was over, Ernie Accorsi drove alone back up Interstate 95 toward his Manhattan home with a cigar in his mouth and baseball on his satellite radio. He had just bounced around the Grapefruit League for a month, sitting in the stands, relaxing, watching nothing but his favorite sportbaseball. Free agency had already opened in the NFL and the draft was less than a month away, but the truth was, he didnt care. His biggest worry was the state of the Yankees pitching staff. The business of the NFL? It was meaningless now.

Still, the former general manager of the New York Giants, a little more than a year into his retirement, couldnt put football completely out of his mind. As he drove home from Florida, alone with his thoughts, he kept drifting back to that magical night in the desert in early February. It seemed like yesterday, though two months had already passed since the night he would always remember as the greatest of his career.

Its amazing, Accorsi said. Sometimes I have to tangibly remind myself that it happened. You work for your whole career, not only for a championship, but for a quarterback to win a championshipespecially me. And then to win it that way? I cant tell you how many times I fantasized and dreamt that was the way it was going to be.

He was sitting in the stands, fifteen rows off the field, on February 3, 2008, when Eli Manninghis hand-picked successor to the legends of Johnny Unitas and John Elwaymade all his dreams come true. The kid led the Giants to one of the most unexpected Super Bowl championships ever, 17-14 over the previously undefeated New England Patriots, and he did it with a last-minute drive taken straight out of Joe Montanas biography. Just the idea that Eli and the Giants would make it to Super Bowl XLIIlet alone win itseemed ridiculous two months earlier when they were being booed out of their own stadium. Even Accorsi walked out on one of Elis November disasters because it was so bad, so disheartening, he couldnt bear to watch.

Now he was watching history. Imagine that. He was watching his quarterback do the impossible. For nearly four decades, Accorsi was like Captain Ahab chasing his white whale around the ocean of the NFL, coming so close to finding the quarterback of his desires, yet always seeming so far away. He was close friends with the great Unitas, who embodied everything he believed a quarterback should be, and hed spend his career looking for the next one. He thought he had one in Elway, the quarterback he drafted in 1983 when he was the general manager of the Baltimore Colts, but that lasted only six days before the Colts owner traded Elway away and broke Accorsis heart. Years later, hed find another one in Bernie Kosar, who turned out to be pretty good for Accorsis Cleveland Browns. But that damn Elway kept swatting down their Super Bowl dreams.