{"id":893454,"date":"2026-05-17T06:00:20","date_gmt":"2026-05-17T06:00:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/893454\/"},"modified":"2026-05-17T06:00:20","modified_gmt":"2026-05-17T06:00:20","slug":"eli-manning-a-pre-draft-dinner-was-why-i-soured-on-chargers-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/893454\/","title":{"rendered":"Eli Manning: A pre-draft dinner was why I soured on Chargers"},"content":{"rendered":"

Eli Manning<\/a> left his pre-draft dinner with the Chargers with a bad taste in his mouth \u2014 and not because of the food in his hometown.<\/p>\n

In maybe his most detailed comments ever about why he refused to play for the Chargers and essentially forced his way to the Giants in 2004, Manning said recently that he sensed dysfunction during a dinner with the Chargers\u2019 brass.<\/p>\n

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\u201cI just didn\u2019t feel like they were the most committed team to winning at the time,\u201d Manning said on \u201cBussin with the Boys.\u201d<\/a> \u201cMarty Schottenheimer was the head coach, who was awesome. Had great respect for him. But they came to work me out in New Orleans, went to dinner and there was just friction between the head coach, general manager [A.J. Smith], the owners [Spanos family]. They are all yelling \u2014 kind of like fighting.<\/p>\n

\"Eli<\/p>\n

Eli Manning is all smiles after throwing out a ceremonial first pitch during a Yankees game in 2024. Jason Szenes for New York Post<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are at a Marriott restaurant. Schottenheimer\u2019s mad like, \u2018We\u2019re in New Orleans and we\u2019re eating at a Marriott?\u2019 He\u2019s like pissed. They are kind of bickering. It just didn\u2019t seem there was a lot of agreement on things and they were committed to building a great winning franchise at that moment.\u201d<\/p>\n

Manning stayed pretty tight-lipped for two decades on the decision.<\/p>\n

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The Chargers ultimately drafted Manning with the No. 1 pick, which made for some awkward on-stage photos and interviews.<\/p>\n

A short time later, the Giants drafted Philip Rivers<\/a> at No. 4 and orchestrated a trade of Manning for Rivers-plus.<\/p>\n

Eli\u2019s father, Archie Manning, took a lot of heat for the decision because of the speculation that he wanted his son to play for a proven winner after his promising career went by the wayside with the bungling Saints.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy parents really weren\u2019t supportive,\u201d Eli said. \u201cMy dad didn\u2019t like the idea. He came to my defense and supported me after everything was going down. Afterwards, he took a blunt of a lot of the criticism. People were saying, \u2018You played in New Orleans. All those years you didn\u2019t win. So you are trying to dictate where your son is going.\u2019 He just kind of bit his tongue and said, \u2018This is what Eli wants to do.\u2019 He kind of did some media to save me from taking all the hits.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Let it be a fair warning for the next year: Any teams at the top of the 2027 draft who are hoping to select Arch Manning<\/a> \u2014 Eli\u2019s nephew and Archie\u2019s grandson \u2014 should have all their representatives on the same page at the dinner table.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Eli Manning left his pre-draft dinner with the Chargers with a bad taste in his mouth \u2014 and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":893455,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[615,1828,3724,7,22547,6,15,3725,5340],"class_list":["post-893454","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nfl-draft","tag-arch-manning","tag-archie-manning","tag-eli-manning","tag-football","tag-marty-schottenheimer","tag-nfl","tag-nfl-draft","tag-philip-rivers","tag-the-chargers"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/116588395109391269","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/893454","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=893454"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/893454\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/893455"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=893454"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=893454"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=893454"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}