Is it time for the Giants to move on from Eli Manning?

The New York Giants are 0-5 and pretty much everything about the franchise is bad right now. All the wide receivers on the team got hurt at the same time — most significantly Odell Beckham Jr. — and the defense looks like it’s falling apart too.

One of the few stable things for the team has been Eli Manning, who has started more than 200 consecutive games for the Giants. He is the exact same quarterback he’s always been: not great, but not terrible.

But now things are different. He’s 36, the Giants aren’t close to being a winner, and it’s getting harder to imagine another Super Bowl run coming with Manning under center.

With the 14-year veteran due to count $22.2 million against the salary cap in 2018 and $23.2 million in 2019, it may be time for the Giants to look elsewhere.

It’s hard to imagine the Giants doing much with the rest of the 2017 season. If there’s good news about this forgettable season so far, it’s that the team is very much in the hunt for a top draft pick in the 2018 NFL Draft.

The Giants drafted Davis Webb in the third round earlier in 2017, but the chance to take a quarterback in the top five in April could be too good to pass up for a team with Manning set to turn 37 in January.

There are varying opinions about Manning that range from “he’s awful” to “he’s underrated and dragged down by a bad offense around him.” But no matter your thoughts on the quarterback, it makes sense for the Giants to begin grooming a replacement.

If a full rebuild is on the way, what’s the point in even dragging Manning along for it? His gigantic cap hit inhibits the process of starting over, and even if the Giants were a contender, it’s hard to justify paying that number to a player who hasn’t finished top 12 in passer rating since 2011.

Tom Coughlin — the man who coached the Giants for the first 12 years of Manning’s career — is now an executive with the Jacksonville Jaguars, a team that’s winning without throwing the football at all. It seems like a perfect fit for Manning, who could play out the final years of his career handing off to Leonard Fournette and leaning on a great defense.

Shipping Manning to Jacksonville, or anywhere else, would mean it’s rebuild time in New York. But it looks like that day may be here, regardless.

Finding quarterbacks isn’t easy. It’s a whole lot better to build a team with one than start from scratch, throw some poor soul into the fire, and hope he’s up to the task.

If the Giants were guaranteed the No. 1 pick and there was an Andrew Luck-level draft prospect waiting for them, that’d be one thing. But the Browns and 49ers haven’t won either, and none of the quarterback prospects of next spring has been that convincing so far in the 2017 college football season.

Maybe New York finds a quarterback of the future it feels comfortable with in April, but even if it does, the best way to develop that player would probably be to sit him behind a veteran like Manning for at least a year or two.

And yes, the first month of the 2017 season has been a disaster, but are the Giants really that far from fixing their problems and being an NFC East contender again in 2018? The defense was No. 2 in points allowed last year and still has all the important pieces like Landon Collins, Olivier Vernon, and Janoris Jenkins.

Injuries happen and if the receivers come back healthy next year, the Giants would be in much better position to recreate their 11-5 season from 2016 than they would with Webb, Geno Smith, a rookie, or any free agent signing.

It’s also possible that Manning would nix any trade. He negotiated a no-trade clause in his deal in 2015 and has told reporters he has no interest in playing elsewhere (although, that’s really the only correct answer).

Attempting to trade Manning only to have the quarterback void the deal would just cause more problems for a team that is already spiraling.

Trading Manning might make sense from a bird’s eye view, but the Giants — just like any other NFL team — are going to be hesitant to make any move that obviously hurts the team in the immediate. There are jobs on the line, and Giants general manager Jerry Reese could be signing his own pink slip if he trades Manning.

If the Giants want to part ways with Manning, the best time would probably be after the 2018 season. Cutting the quarterback in spring 2019 would save the team $17 million in cap space and leave the team with just $6.2 million in dead money.

At that point Manning will be 38, and that seems like a much more likely end to his tenure with the Giants than any midseason trade.