By Dave Goldberg
The Associated Press

No. 1 draft pick Eli Manning received a $20 million bonus from the Giants. The AP/JIM MCKNIGHT

NEW YORK - Eli Manning has yet to play an NFL game and he's almost as wealthy as his brother, the league's co-MVP.

Manning, the first overall pick in the NFL draft, signed Thursday with the New York Giants on a deal that includes a $20 million signing bonus in a package that with incentives could be worth $54 million over six years.

The base package is $45 million.

The bonus is one of the highest in NFL history, the top being the $34.5 million paid to Peyton Manning when he re-signed with Indianapolis this year. The difference, of course, is that Peyton is one of the NFL's top stars and Eli could very well start this season on the bench behind Kurt Warner, signed by the Giants to ease the rookie's transition to the NFL.

"I was hoping to get it done. I know they had been talking about it but I just left it up to them," Manning said of the discussions between the team and his agent, Tom Condon. "I just wanted to get here on time. When it came to crunch time, they got it worked out."

Eli Manning's bonus is comparable to that paid in recent years to such veteran stars as the Giants' Michael Strahan and the Eagles' Donovan McNabb. And it's 43 percent higher than the $14 million the Bengals gave Carson Palmer as the No. 1 pick in the draft last season.

The signing is liable to ease the backlog of first-round signings in a week in which all 32 training camps are opening. Hours after Manning signed, offensive tackle Robert Gallery, the No. 2 pick by Oakland, did the same.

Eli Manning's contract demonstrates how much NFL money has increased in the six years since Peyton Manning was drafted No. 1 in 1998. Peyton's signing bonus was $11.6 million as part of a $48 million deal that included incentives.