If Manning had said anything else he would have been penalized by the NFL. What else could he say? That's called black mail (no pun intended).
Exactly ! Eli may truly feel that way, but in this new era of McCarthyism, he's not an NFL QB for being stupid.
He knows if he not only wants to keep from being ran out of the league, but he knows he's a thin line away from personally losing millions if his endorsers run away, which of course they would the moment he even hinted at being concerned about having a homosexual in the locker room.