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Ryan Clark Will Drag You to Hell if You Gush About Eli Manning and Rip Cam Newton

Throw the towel, Paul Finebaum! Throw the damn towel! Good Lord, what a beatdown this was. Drago vs. Apollo and Finebaum will be lucky to make it to the ambulance before the EMTs call his time of death.

And Clark is not just right, he couldn’t possibly be more right. Yes, Eli Manning has won two Super Bowls. That sentence is gypsy curse I’ll have to live with for the rest of my days. I’m so post-traumatic about it that I still worry the Giants will sneak into the playoffs and steal another banner from us, even after they’ve been eliminated. I admit that.

But while we’re admitting things, let’s admit Manning has never accomplished another thing. The moment that Hail Mary a the end of Super Bowl XLVI landed just out of Gronk’s reach, Manning became a Made Man. A protected class. Above reproach. Uncriticizable, like the Papal Infallibility Doctrine applied to him.

Which is what makes the comparison to Cam Newton so apt. Of course it’s part of the math that Manning has two rings and Newton doesn’t. No one’s disputing that. But while Eli’s been living off his long distant past success, Newton’s been winning. He’s banged up as all hell and you wonder if a guy his size is going to be able to come back from a foot injury like he’s dealing with. But just since 2013, he got his team to the playoffs four times in five seasons, had double digit wins three times, including a 15-1 Super Bowl year and won an MVP.

That Super Bowl against New England was Manning’s last postseason win. Since then his team has gone 47-65 and 0-1 in the playoffs. The Giants went 5-11 last year and 3-13 the year before and yet the biggest beefs the city of New York had with the team was that one time they had the audacity to bench Eli and when they dared blashpheme by drafting Daniel Jones to replace him. Meanwhile Carolina was going 11-5, 7-9 and some of those same people are screaming about that failure Cam Newton who’s dragging his franchise down.

So keep fighting the good fight, Ryan Clark. “Eli has ruined that franchise! We gotta take out how we feel about dudes. Because he’s a Manning. Because we love him. Because he gives us this ‘Aw shucks, you can do whatever you want to me and I will be OK about it.’ That’s not true!” You are on the side of the angels on this one.