Elisha Nelson Manning is a no-doubt Hall of Famer to anyone who actually looks at it closely. He has one of the most underrated careers of all time and is constantly disrespected by fans across the league. My three main points are that he played his best when it mattered most, he was always playing, and his total stats are very high on the all-time lists. All statistics used are based on Pro Football Reference.

Eli always seemed to play his best whenever it mattered most. He holds the record for the most passing yards in a single postseason in 2011 at 1,219 yards. He went 8-4 in playoff games, which is good enough for a 66% win percentage. He won two Super Bowls and won Super Bowl MVP in both. Both those Super Bowls were against the widely considered GOAT, Tom Brady. One of those years was against what is widely considered the greatest team ever, the 2007 Patriots whose only loss on the entire season was against Eli and the Giants in the Super Bowl. Only one other team beat Brady during his career and that was after multiple injuries to the Patriots. Eli Manning is no doubt one of the best playoff quarterbacks ever.

Eli rarely ever took games off. He holds third place for most consecutive games started as a quarterback, only behind Brett Favre and Philip Rivers, and had it not been for Ben McAdoo taking him out and benching him for one game in favor of Geno Smith, an act that got McAdoo fired the day after the game, he could very well be second place. He seemed to never take a game off and the only times you would ever see any kind of quit in him is when he asked out of San Diego, and when he was about to get sacked, the latter of which helped elongate his career. He had almost no injuries during his career even though after 2012 he had all-time bad offensive lines where he would have almost no time to throw.

Eli Manning’s second biggest claim to the Hall of Fame, with the Super Bowls being first, is that he is top 10 in both passing yards and passing touchdowns. He is only 7,000 yards away from being 5th in passing yards, 7,000 yards is 2-3 mediocre seasons. He is 89 touchdowns away from being 5th in touchdowns, 90 touchdowns is 3-4 good seasons. Overall, if he had played for 5 seasons at most he would be top 5 in the two most important stats for a quarterback. Eli is also top 20 all-time in quarterback rating among quarterbacks that started 10 or more games in 10 or more seasons, something only truly elite quarterbacks can do. He is 15th, only three away from 10th, all-time in fourth-quarter comebacks, and 11th, only one away from 10th, all-time in game-winning drives, showing that he was truly clutch. Finally, he is 40th all-time in Adjusted Approximate Value, a stat that gives about where a player would rank all time based on stats. This doesn’t seem great at first but when you consider that there are 346 players in the Pro Football Hall of Fame it shows that he definitely deserves to be in Canton.

Overall, I think that anyone who truly looks into it will see that Eli Manning belongs in the Pro Football Hall of Fame, especially when you consider that he always played his best when it mattered most, he never took time off, and his stats are some of the best ever. Finally, and possibly the most important part, you can’t spell ELIte without Eli.