Former Giants QB Eli Manning not voted into Pro Football Hall of Fame on first ballot

NEW ORLEANS — Eli Manning was 2-0 in Super Bowls. He now is 0-1 at getting into the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

The Class of 2025 was announced on Thursday night at NFL Honors and did not include Manning, a first-time finalist in his first year of eligibility.

Enshrinement could happen at some point, but this time Manning experienced something that rarely happened to him in big games throughout his Giants career: He came up short.

Antonio Gates, Jared Allen, Eric Allen and Sterling Sharpe were voted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in the smallest induction class in 20 years after offseason rule changes that were meant to make it harder to get inducted.

Sharpe got in as a seniors candidate in voting and will join younger brother Shannon as the first siblings ever inducted into the Hall.

Manning’s former teammates were hoping for better news.

“I hope it happens,” Hall of Famer Michael Strahan, the most recent Giants player enshrined, said earlier Thursday at the Fox Sports availability. “I think he deserves to get in. I know he will get in. As we know, those things are always unpredictable.”

Strahan had to wait for his second year on the ballot for his gold jacket.

Said Victor Cruz: “Eli Manning is a Hall of Famer because of the consistency he had over a number of years in the league as well as being a two-time Super Bowl MVP.”

Ultimately, voters felt Manning’s accomplishments were not quite enough to warrant enshrinement on his first ballot. Sixteen of the 26 quarterbacks in the Hall have gone in on their first ballot, the most recent being Peyton Manning with the Class of 2021.

The bitter irony of the first-ballot snub is that logistically, this shaped up as the easiest year for Manning to get in. He was the only quarterback among this year’s finalist group.

Next year Drew Brees will be up for consideration along with Philip Rivers. Other quarterbacks will follow them shortly after, including Ben Roethlisberger and Cam Newton in 2027, Tom Brady and Matt Ryan in 2028, and Aaron Rodgers five years after whenever he retires. It will create quarterback congestion for the on-ramp to Canton.

And those are just the ones who play Manning’s position. Add other surefire inductees such as Adrian Peterson, Jason Witten, Frank Gore, Larry Fitzgerald, J.J. Watt and Aaron Donald, and those are even more careers that likely would be considered to have surpassed Manning’s.

Then combine that with growing intent from the Hall to make enshrinement more exclusive. Rules previously dictated that each class have at least five modern-era players; that was changed this year to anywhere between three and five, with players now requiring 80% of the overall vote of the 50 panelists to get in.

Manning, for all he meant to the Giants and the sport, finds himself closer to the back of the line Friday than he was to the front of it Thursday.

The debate over Manning — on bar stools and call-in shows around the country and almost certainly among the cloistered voters — was complicated.

Manning was named MVP in Super Bowls XLII and XLVI, both against Brady and the Patriots.

The first of those came against a previously undefeated team courtesy of one of the most remarkable and memorable plays in the sport’s history, a fourth-quarter desperation heave down the middle of the field by Manning that David Tyree caught by pinning the ball against his helmet.

The other was slightly less improbable but included what many consider to be the greatest pass of Manning’s career, a long throw down the left sideline to Mario Manningham for a 38-yard completion that set up the game-winning score in his second Super Bowl victory.

He also ranks 11th in NFL history in passing yards (57,023) and touchdown passes (366) and — this is something he has said he is most proud of — never missed a game because of injury. He started 222 in a row, regular and postseason, between his rookie year in 2004 and an oddly timed benching in 2017, the third-longest streak by a quarterback in league history behind Brett Favre (321) and Rivers (252).

Detractors, and there are plenty, point to his career record of 117-117 and say he made only four Pro Bowls in 16 years, never made an All-Pro team and never received a single vote for regular-season MVP or Offensive Player of the Year.

While his two Super Bowl runs certainly were lofty achievements, they also were the only two years of his career in which he won a postseason game.

Being voted in this year would have been poetic for Manning because the Super Bowl — and thus the Hall of Fame announcement at NFL Honors — is being held in his hometown of New Orleans. The Mannings serve as the unofficial hosts each time the game comes to The Big Easy. This would have been a Crescent City coronation for one of the city’s princes.

It didn’t happen that way, though.

Manning had a storybook career as a Giant. His Hall of Fame journey will be a bit choppier.

By Tom Rock

tom.rock@newsday.com@TomRock_Newsday

Tom Rock began covering sports for Newsday in 1996 and became its NFL columnist in 2022. He previously was Newsday's Giants beat writer beginning in 2008.