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E. Manning Signs With Giants, Gets $20M Bonus
New York traded for Manning after he made it clear that he did not want to play for the San Diego Chargers.
Eli Manning has yet to play an NFL game and he's almost as wealthy as his brother, the league's co-MVP.
Manning, the first overall pick in the NFL draft, signed Thursday with the New York Giants on a deal that includes a $20 million signing bonus in a package that with incentives could be worth $54 million over six years.
The base package is $45 million.
The bonus is one of the highest in NFL history, the top being the $34.5 million paid to Peyton Manning when he re-signed with Indianapolis this year. The difference, of course, is that Peyton is one of the NFL's top stars and Eli could very well start this season on the bench behind Kurt Warner, signed by the Giants to ease the rookie's transition from the University of Mississippi to the NFL.
"I was hoping to get it done. I know they had been talking about it but I just left it up to them," Manning said of the discussions between the team and his agent, Tom Condon.
"I just wanted to get here on time. When it came to crunch time, they got it worked out."
Eli Manning's bonus is comparable to that paid in recent years to such veteran stars as the Giants' Michael Strahan and the Eagles' Donovan McNabb. And it's 43 percent higher than the $14 million Cincinnati gave Carson Palmer as the No. 1 pick in the draft last season.
"It was a very complicated contract," said Ernie Accorsi, the Giants general manager who began intensive work on the deal Tuesday night with Manning's agent, Tom Condon.
"You always want players in on time. But sometimes that's not possible. We're all restricted to a percentage of increases every year. It's a puzzle."
The signing is liable to ease the backlog of first-round signings in a week in which all 32 training camps are opening. Hours after Manning signed, offensive tackle Robert Gallery, the No. 2 pick by Oakland, did the same.
"The top of the first round is exploding," said Leigh Steinberg, who represents Ben Roethlisberger, the third quarterback chosen and the 11th pick overall. Steinberg said he expected a deal between his client and the Pittsburgh Steelers in the next couple of days.
But it's not clear what might happen with quarterback Philip Rivers, taken fourth by the Giants and traded to San Diego for Manning, who had made it clear he didn't want to play for the Chargers. Rivers is seeking to be paid as the first pick in the draft, something the Giants were glad to do with Manning but something the often penurious Chargers might not care to do with Rivers.
Rivers' agent, Jimmy Sexton, is believed to be seeking a bonus similar to Manning's.
There was never much chance that Manning would hold out beyond the one day he officially was absent from camp.
Condon and Accorsi have a history of reaching accord and Accorsi made it clear from the time the team drafted Manning that they would pay him as the No. 1 pick.
The biggest obstacle turned out to be structuring the contract because the Giants were allocated a rookie salary cap equivalent with the fourth overall pick.
Thus the signing bonus that the team said will be spread over five seasons - $4 million per year to make it more cap-friendly. The structure also had to be approved by the league before Manning could sign it.
But in the end, Manning will be in training camp on time for the first training camp practice Friday morning. All he missed was a team meeting as he was driving the 150 miles to Albany, N.Y., after signing the contract at Giants Stadium.
That left second-round pick Chris Snee, a guard, as the Giants' only unsigned rookie. Snee is the fiance of coach Tom Coughlin's daughter and the father of Coughlin's grandson.
Eli Manning's contract demonstrates how much NFL money has increased in the six years since Peyton Manning was drafted No. 1 in 1998. Peyton's signing bonus was $11.6 million as part of a $48 million deal that included incentives.
And compare that to what their father, Archie Manning, got as the second overall choice in the 1971 draft. New Orleans paid him $410,000 over five years, at the time the largest rookie contract ever.
Source: AP
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