Eli Manning Has Advice For Nephew Arch: 'Focus On Playing High School Football'

Eli Manning knows a thing or two about each step of playing quarterback, from high school to college to the NFL and even to winning a Super Bowl. So he's a good person to advise nephew Arch Manning, the top-rated high school QB in the nation.

And Eli is telling Arch to stick to the present.

"I’m not super-involved or giving too much advice," Eli Manning told the Lafayette Daily Advertiser. "I would just encourage him to focus on playing high school football."

Eli actually won two Super Bowls as a member of the New York Giants (2008, '12). He is son of former NFL QB Archie Manning and brother of Peyton Manning. Arch Manning is the son of Cooper, the one Manning who never made it to the NFL.

But Arch is 6-foot-4 and entering his junior season at Isidore Newman High School in New Orleans, and he is already being recruited by every major program in the country.

“I told Arch that he’s going into his junior year of high school and to not forget that’s a pretty special time in your life,” Eli Manning told the NFL Network. “Enjoy being a junior in high school, enjoy being the quarterback of your high school team, playing with your buddies and teammates, the guys you’ve grown up with and been playing backyard football with since you were 10 years old. … Don’t get so overwhelmed with the college thing that you forget about the time of your life that you’re in right now.”

The Mannings have largely shielded Arch from the press and even college coaches. As Eli indicated, the goal is to let the kid be ... well, a kid. In today's world of social media and recruiting, that's no easy task.

“Recruiting starts earlier. You go to these camps, the communication, the Zooms going on, the texting,” Eli said. “It’s a whole new world for recruiting, and I almost feel bad for the high school kids. It’s lot to go on their shoulders.”