Young Eli Manning Can't Overcome His Bad Touch

Some blame Tom Coughlin for the Giants ineptitude yesterday, but young Eli is no longer the fair-haired Super Bowl hero. The New York media examines the carnage at the Meadowlands.

•"Maybe two years ago, that was in vogue. But he's a made man now, a Super Bowl winner. You can only say he had a disappointing game and that Eli Manning is not quite - here we go again - his brother." [ NY Daily News]

• "After this," center Shaun O'Hara confessed, inside the funeral-parlor still of the Giants locker room, "you almost wonder if it isn't better to not make the playoffs than to play the way we did out there today." [ NY Post]

• "The magic, or well-timed competence, so evident in the Giants’ run through the playoffs last season seemed absent. Over and over, the Giants made a succession of adept plays only to stumble on third down, converting 3 of 13 attempts." [ NY Times]

• "This is not the end of the world. The Giants won the Super Bowl last year, after all, in the most inspiring fashion possible. Yesterday didn’t eradicate that. And the Giants should still be considered one of the best teams in the NFC next year as well. But that feeling of invincibility, that notion of New York superiority that the Giants were the lone local team to provide us with over the last year … that’s gone. Blame Eli, blame Coughlin, blame Carney, blame Plaxico, blame whomever you would like. All that matters is that there are only four teams who have the opportunity to experience what the Giants did last year, and none of them are the Giants." [ NY Mag]

•" 'It’s terrible,” said Eddie Nunez, 29, a Giants fan from Flushing, after watching his team go down 23-11 to the rival Philadelphia Eagles in the divisional round of the playoffs. “I was nothing but confident. I put a lot of money on this game.' " [ AM New York]

• "The Giants were like that a year ago. We wondered how much they would miss Plaxico Burress Sunday, and Michael Strahan and Osi Umenyiora. They missed them all, mightily. It turned out they were never the same on offense after Burress shot himself in the leg and tried to shoot his team out of a cannon at the same time." [ NY Daily News]

• "The Giants will never admit it packing their bags on Blue Monday, but their chance for a repeat championship was shot dead the night Plaxico Burress shot himself in the leg inside a nightclub at the end of November." [ NY Post]

PHOTO: Philly.com