PHOENIX - He'll be an interested observer in Super Bowl XLII tomorrow night. Ernie Accorsi assembled a good portion of the New York Giants' NFC championship roster and made the bold deal that brought Eli Manning to New York in 2004.
Oh, Ernie did a couple of other things in his 35-year NFL career. He also happens to be the man who first hired Bill Belichick as a head coach in the NFL.
After 14 years with the Giants, nine as general manager, Accorsi retired at the end of the 2006 season, turning the team over to Jerry Reese. Now the Giants are in the Super Bowl and everyone's wondering if Accorsi misses it.
"I'm a purist and I don't know how I could be any happier or have more fulfillment than I have now," Accorsi said earlier this week. "The fact that I'm not still working when we're getting to the Super Bowl doesn't mean anything to me. Jerry Reese did a great job."
Accorsi gave up Philip Rivers and three draft picks (one became Shawne Merriman) to acquire Manning. He set himself up to be ripped any time Manning struggled. The deal had the potential to be a legacy-breaker.
Early in the 2007 season, retired Giants running back Tiki Barber questioned Manning's leadership abilities. The New York tabloids piled on. Eli wasn't tough enough. Didn't care enough. He was J.D. Drew in shoulder pads. He was going to be Ernie's white elephant - a stain on a long and impressive NFL résumé.
"I never wavered," said Accorsi. "My feeling about a player is if you see it, it's there. You just have to get it out of him. We saw it in his rookie year and certainly saw it in the years after that. He was 10th in the league in won-loss. The quarterback to me is the most important player in sports. This guy was winning games for us. He won the division the year before. He had some ups and downs, but a lot of the great quarterbacks threw a lot of interceptions. He did that, I think, because he was trying to lead the team, particularly with all the injuries we had last year.
"I read all that, that this was going to be my legacy. You have to be true to yourself. I had nine playoff teams in 17 years as a GM. I know that. If they were just going to remember this pick . . . It's like with Bobby Beathard. He had a fabulous career and people still pin the Ryan Leaf thing on him. If they were going to do that, fine. It wasn't going to affect me because I'm secure enough in myself. But I knew Eli had talent and I knew that sooner or later it would surface."
It took a while. Manning hit a low mark Nov. 25 when he threw four interceptions (three were returned for touchdowns) in a 41-17 loss to the non-playoff-bound Vikings.
"I think he had three interceptions for touchdowns, which I never saw because I left with 2:58 to go in the second quarter," said Accorsi. "Little did I know it was going to get worse. But it never affected whether I thought he had the talent to play. He was getting blistered and I felt sorry for him because I put him in this situation and I was getting blistered. But a lot of it was his name, what I went through to get him, and the fact that he was playing in New York. So he was a target. But he stuck it out."
Manning has zero turnovers in three road playoff victories.
"The one thing that was the biggest misjudgment was his toughness. People thought he was phlegmatic. You don't come out of that family without being tough. That surfaced in Green Bay. [Trainer] Ronnie Barnes told me they were begging him to wear a glove on his throwing hand. Ronnie was worried about frostbite. Eli wouldn't even consider it. His whole attitude that night was to disregard the cold. That was the part of him that I knew was there - the toughness. He's just got a different personality than his brother."
Accorsi scouted Manning when Eli was a junior at Mississippi.
"They had a losing team and he was getting beat up," Accorsi recalls. "There were rumors that he might come out, so I told Jerry Reese that I've got to see him in person. To me, you have to see a quarterback in person. You have to go on the field, watch him throw, and judge his arm strength. I wanted to see him against a good team. It was Auburn. It was cold. I remember freezing to death. They had me outside. In that league, unless he's playing Kentucky or Vanderbilt, he's outmanned in every game. He had a great game. He threw an interception at the end trying to win it for them, but he kept bringing them back and bringing them back. I loved him in that game. He showed all the ingredients that you want.
"One of the first things I learned about a quarterback was 'Can he take you down the field with the game on the line and get your team in the end zone?' And that's what I saw."
What about Belichick? Accorsi was GM of the Cleveland Browns when they hired Belichick for the 1991 season. What did Accorsi see in the young Giants assistant coach?
"The interview that got him the job was two years before we hired him," remembered Accorsi. "Marty Schottenheimer had left and we were going to hire Bud Carson, but Bill had asked for an interview. I said 'OK, I'll interview you, but we're looking for a veteran coach.' I met him for lunch in Mobile [Ala.] during the Senior Bowl. The interview was so captivating that we never got to practice. When it was over I told him, 'You were down 35 points in the fourth quarter and you cut it to 1 point with the ball.'
"I remember when I was in college and John F. Kennedy was running for president. My first reaction was - 'This guy has been preparing for this his whole life.' That's exactly how I felt about Belichick when I interviewed him that day. I thought, 'This guy decided he wanted to be a head coach when he was about 7 years old.' When Bud flamed out the second year, Bill was right at the top of our list, and we waited for him."
Then, as now, Belichick was worth the wait.
