DETROIT – He put all the blame on himself, which is what Eli Manning always does after a performance like this. A star athlete doesn't thrive in New York long throwing his teammates under the nearest bus – at least, most don't – and the Giants quarterback learned early that he needed to avoid that path.

And look: Plenty of what went wrong in this 35-14 demolition in the Motor City falls on Manning. He is the one who rolled to his left and threw a wobbly pass off his back foot, one that the Lions intercepted in the third quarter. Five plays later, they were in the end zone again, and that was it for the season opener.

Manning was 11 of 23 for 70 yards with two interceptions at that point – a stat line that seemed stolen from his first few seasons, when it was fair to wonder if he'd ever live up to his status as a No. 1 overall draft pick.

Those interceptions seemed from the bad-old-days, too, especially his second one, when he drifted to his left and threw a wobbler off his back leg. Victor Cruz was open, but this pass had no chance of getting to him, not with safety Glover Quin close enough to make the play.

“The (interception) to Victor is a bad decision by me,” he said. “I had pressure, rolled to the left, and it was a bad decision to make that throw. I couldn't get as much on it as I wanted to. The first one, bad decision by me as well.”

So go ahead and blame Manning. He did. But there aren't many quarterbacks who could've done much better with an offense that, in no particular order, couldn't block, couldn't run, couldn't protect the passer, couldn't run crisp routes and couldn't catch the football.

“Again, it's a team game,” a furious head coach Tom Coughlin said. “Certainly, I don't want him to throw interceptions – that's not what I'm saying. But he's not more to blame than anyone else. Blame me!”

He talked about getting back to work, but honestly, it's hard to know how they magically make a lot of these problems better with a nice week of practice. They don't have the personnel to protect Manning, who was sacked twice and rushed nearly every time he dropped back to throw. He is the NFL's reigning Ironman, but the way he continues to absorb hit after hit after hit, it's hard not to worry about his survival.

An effective running game would help that, and Coughlin expected the Giants to have one, but his team gained just 53 yards on 22 carries for a tidy 2.4 average. A few more playmakers might help, too, but the only proven one on this team – Cruz – spent most of the night fighting through double coverages to finish with two catches for 24 yards.

So a team that started 0-6 last season spent much of the postgame reminding reporters that this was only one loss, not a sinking ship. “No concern. No concern,” Cruz said. “Don't put that voodoo on us just yet.”

Manning led that charge, even coming off a season in which he threw a career-high 27 interceptions, even after a preseason in which the Giants looked like they were still processing, to be kind, the new system from coordinator Ben McAdoo.

The opener seemed to confirm the worst fears. Unless you're the man in the middle of it.

“No, no concern,” Manning said. “That first game is where you're going to learn the most, and looking at a first game and a lot of plays we'll go back and dissect, and it will be great to learn when I can improve with my decision making and my timing in the offense, those things.”

We'll see if he's right and if big improvements are possible, or if this team and its offense are heading down a familiar road now. Manning knows better than to blame anyone but himself. Then again, did he really have to?