Jerry Reese, Giants not ready to turn to Davis Webb

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Ralph Vacchiano | Facebook | Twitter | Archive

EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. - Jerry Reese cracked the door open a bit for the Giants to sit quarterback Eli Manning take a look at rookie Davis Webb "at some point" this season. But he also made it clear that the Giants, despite being a dismal 1-6, are nowhere near that point now.

"At some point, but when is that some point?" Reese said. "It's not right now because we're going to fight with everything we have with these nine games left and hopefully we can turn our season around."

As unlikely as that seems, Reese said that remains the team's mission, to salvage what it can out of the final nine games of this season and to fight for a playoff spot as long as the Giants remain mathematically alive. As long as they are, they will clearly be sticking with their 36-year-old franchise quarterback at the helm.

But what happens when -- OK, if -- they are eliminated from playoff contention? On Monday, Ben McAdoo seemed to indicate that even then he wouldn't make a quarterback switch when he said "It's not to that point and I don't see that point coming." But despite McAdoo's insistence that he would make that call, a quarterback switch would almost certainly be an organization decision.

And if so, Reese didn't sound like he'd be completely against it.

It would make some sense, of course, since Webb is potentially the Giants' franchise quarterback of the future. They also could be sitting on a high pick in what is expected to be a quarterback-rich draft, so they might want to find out what they have in Webb before they decide whether to turn to someone else.

Then again, Manning does still have two years left on his contract and has never come close to even hinting that he's nearing the end of his career. So what does he think about all this talk about the Giants beginning to plan for a future without him?

"Hey, you know, I've got to play better," Manning said. "So I'm going to worry about my job -- going out there and playing at a high level."

Reese agreed that, "just like everybody else on the team, Eli needs to play better." But Manning's play really isn't the issue. It's about whether it makes sense to plan for the future when the season is finally, officially, lost.

That, though, is apparently a topic for another day. For now, Reese kept insisting that all is not lost yet.

"Right now, we have nine games to play and I feel like, don't count us out yet," Reese said when he was first asked about making the move to Webb. "We've been left for dead by a lot of people, but don't count us out yet. We're going to go into the second half of the season, give it everything we have, do some self-evaluations and figure out what we can do better, what things we have done good, what we've done bad, how can we manufacture and win football games. That's where our focus is moving forward right now."