"The next thing he knows, he's just holding her shirt; she's gone," Manning said Monday at Giants Stadium. "He laid there for two days, just waiting to die, pretty much, and giving up. Finally someone came by and convinced him to get on a raft and saved him."

Manning, the Giants' starting quarterback, had watched the horror in his hometown unfold on television last week. He compulsively looked for places close to his family's home in the Garden District; he recognized spots where he used to play as a child. The visit Saturday was as close as the Mannings could get to New Orleans, where they grew up. Their father, Archie, was a quarterback for the Saints.

The enormity of the disaster was brought home in terrible detail during Manning's eight hours in Baton Rouge, in the difference he detected between the people who had been brought to the shelter with their families and those who still did not know where their children were.

Manning's parents, Archie and Olivia, left town last Saturday and were staying in Oxford, Miss. Their home, they were told, was not flooded, although they do not know when they will be able to return.

The images on television haunted Manning. "You recognize areas," he said. "St. Bernard, that whole area got hit real hard. Every Fourth of July, that's where I was playing baseball. It's hard to see places you recognize and people walking on the street with nothing."

Manning will turn to more prosaic concerns Tuesday. He will have his first full practice since spraining his right elbow more than two weeks ago and will begin preparing for the Giants' season opener Sunday against Arizona. Manning threw 75 passes on Sunday to test his arm, and he said everything felt fine. So he and Coach Tom Coughlin are all but certain that he will start Sunday.

"He's excited and we are, too -- anxious to get going, really," Coughlin said. "I think he has put himself in a position where he feels real good about where he's at."