Why Eli Manning Can't Avoid Blame for N.Y. Giants' Offensive Woes Moving Forward

"F."

Who knew one little letter could send so many people into a tizzy?

I didn't, until I used it to grade Eli Manning's play in the New York Giants' 38-17 loss to the Seattle Seahawks in Week 10.

Let me start by saying I've always been a Manning defender, apologist—whatever you want to call it. I wasn't one of the rabid fans, clamoring outside Eli's Hoboken condo with my pitchfork, calling for the Hudson River to run red with Manning blood after he led the league with 27 interceptions in 2013.

I'm more of a level-headed type, the type who analyzes what he sees on the field, not what he feels in his heart.

And I didn't like what I saw on Sunday.

But Manning threw for nearly 300 yards and a touchdown! You're really going to give him a failing grade for one measly interception? It's not his fault the defense allowed Seattle to rack up 350 rushing yards!

No, the loss was not entirely his fault; more than one positional unit is allowed to fail. Now, before you call me a delusional writer bumbling his way across the Internet, please allow me to explain why, yes, Manning deserves to fail for just one pass he threw on Sunday.

If you were to treat each of Manning's pass attempts as an individual quiz, he would have earned a passing grade. He completed 29 of his 44 tosses (65.9 percent). He connected on a touchdown pass to Preston Parker and found Odell Beckham Jr. open for several more beauties.

If you then calculated the average of all the "quiz" grades combined, it may have been an "A" outing for Manning.

Or, we could combine all those cumbersome statistics and package them into a pretty passer rating (81.9, for the record) and say he had a good game. We could also say passers like Tony Romo and Alex Smith are of the same caliber as Tom Brady and Peyton Manning.

Each throw is of equal importance, according to that rating, and anyone who's ever watched a football game knows that simply is not true.

So, instead of viewing each attempt as an individual test, let's first understand that the entire game is an exam.

Look at it this way: Imagine a radio host having a great day behind the microphone. Then, in the final segment of his three-hour show, he uses profanity and earns a suspension from the radio station. As good as his overall body of work was that day, the host still failed.

An egregious error in judgment can have that effect. It's that kind of effect that Manning's third-quarter interception had on his grade.

You see, things were going well for the Giants until Manning threw the ball to Seattle's secondary. Sure, New York's defense was surrendering rushing yards in backbreaking numbers, and the team moments before had lost the three-point lead it held going into halftime. But the game was still tied and New York was on the move.

The conservative game plan wasn't blowing the Seahawks out of the water, but it was keeping Manning and the Giants in the driver's seat. That changed the exact moment Manning was intercepted.

Before Manning made his ill-fated decision, he drove the Giants from their own 20-yard line all the way to Seattle's 39. Five to ten more yards would have put them in field-goal range, which could have put the Giants up 20-17 going into the fourth quarter. A touchdown (and a little more time milked off the clock) may have forced the Seahawks to pass when they got the ball back.

Perhaps Manning was feeling himself after converting on back-to-back third downs—one a 20-yard completion to Parker, the other an eight-yarder to Beckham—because on the ensuing first-and-ten, seemingly out of nowhere, Manning heaved a play-action pass toward the end zone for Beckham.

The Seahawks hardly bit when Manning showed the ball to Michael Cox, and Manning never took his eyes off his primary target, as Beckham sprinted down the right sideline. By the time Manning's high-flying heave began its descent, OBJ had become the defender. At that point, the best thing he could do was deflect the ball away from Seahawks cornerback Richard Sherman, even though the deflection landed in the hands of safety Earl Thomas.

The overaggressive pass was out of character for Manning, considering how clean his play was through the first half of the season.

For the record: I never blamed Manning for any of New York's first five losses of the season. On most occasions, too many things went wrong for Manning to pull out a miraculous victory—even were he to come up with a perfect performance. Between injuries, inconsistent receiver play and a general lack of pass protection, the Giants featured a good quarterback stuck in a bad situation. That's not even going into the team's defensive struggles.

The scene was different in Seattle. You can point to the lack of success New York had on the ground—on both sides of the ball—but Manning was actually getting some time to throw and his playmakers were stepping up to the plate. 

So, the blame falls on Manning. It was his poor decision that ultimately ceded momentum to the Seahawks, allowing them to run away with the game in the fourth quarter, and no one else's.

While Manning may be on pace to set career highs in several categories, the Giants' season won't be saved by an exceptional passing stat line. All that matters in the Big Apple are wins, and when one man stands between Big Blue and victory, New Yorkers call him out.

Even if that man is two-time Super Bowl MVP Eli Manning.

Kevin Boilard writes about the New York Giants at Bleacher Report.