The Big Lead

Eli Manning's Supposed Dinner With the Bears is the Dumbest NFL Offseason Rumor Since Tom Brady to the Giants

By Stephen Douglas

Eli Manning Announces Retirement
Eli Manning Announces Retirement / Elsa/Getty Images
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Eli Manning retired six weeks ago. There was a press conference and everything. That is a fact. But did he have dinner last night?

Since the former New York Giants quarterback has no social media presence, it is impossible to tell. All we have to go on are rumors that he had dinner, like this one that was started by an account run by a dog associated with the Pardon My Take podcast.

A few hours later, Cole Wright, a human being who works for Chicago's Marquee Sports Network and Sirius XM's NFL channel, also tweeted that Eli had dinner on Wednesday night. Again, that he specifically ate dinner with the Chicago Bears. Wright added the tasty detail that the dinner was at a restaurant with a $215 tasting menu. How many members of the Chicago Bears? That part was still unclear. It is unlikely there were many Chicago Bears since the dining room appears as small as it is fancy. The important thing is that Eli did not go to bed hungry. Or so we thought, since Wright followed up his tweet with the clarifier that he wasn't reporting anything, just reacting to the news.

On Thursday morning, presumably around the time Eli would be breaking his fast, Adam Jahns (another human) from The Athletic's Chicago branch, tweeted that the rumored meal on Wednesday evening did not take place between Eli Manning and an unknown number of Chicago Bears.

A few minutes later, another human, David Kaplan of ESPN 1000 Chicago, also tweeted confirmation that Eli did not have dinner with the Chicago Bears. That's when the canine who originally sent out the rumor pointed out that it would have been against the rules for Eli Manning to eat dinner with any Chicago Bears for another two weeks, even if he did retire six weeks ago.

So will Eli Manning replace Mitch Trubisky under center for the Bears next season? Probably not. We'll be able to confirm that when training camp starts if Eli is still retired from football. Even then, we may never know for sure whether or not he had dinner on March 4th.