Saints All-Time Top 5 QBs: Child is the Father to the Manning
A DEEP dive into the life and times of Archie Manning. Plus, Bobby Hebert's holdout, Aaron Brooks in his cousin's shadow, and much (maybe too much) more.
We’ve got some controversial material to get to, so let’s dive right in.
1. Drew Brees
Brees led the NFL in DYAR twice, finished second twice and finished third four other times. He led the Saints to their only championship, nine total postseason wins and a few heartbreaking postseason near misses. He …
You know all about Brees. You are here for Archie Manning, aren’t you? Let’s just get to Archie Manning.
2. Archie Manning
"Success, you know, is a relative thing," Manning will say. "I've enjoyed so little success as a professional player. I've sat around with Bradshaw and Griese and Stabler, and I couldn't open my mouth. They'd be saying, 'Remember the '75 playoffs?' or 'Remember that pass I threw in the Super Bowl?' and I'd be thinking about our 8-8 season, or our wins over Minnesota in '78 or Tampa Bay in '79. It's all relative. Those things stick out to me, but what am I going to say?" – Paul Zimmerman, Sports Illustrated, June, 1981.
Archie Manning was an outstanding quarterback trapped on a miserable team. It was the truth, then it became a truism, then both the hagiography of pro football’s Patron Saint of Eternal Suffering and the origin myth for the NFL’s reigning First Family.
When I was 10 years old and only knew of the “New Orleans Saints” from football cards, NFL Today mentions and annual losses to Dick Vermeil’s Eagles, I knew Archie Manning was an outstanding quarterback on a miserable team. The announcers recited the benediction on every telecast. The wisdom seeped so deeply into the zeitgeist by 1980 that children in South Jersey absorbed it. Dr. Z’s Sports Illustrated article cited above, the Ivanhoe to Manning’s Robin Hood saga, was the culmination of the Manning mythos, not its source. Manning would have done amazing things given better circumstances. To suggest otherwise, even today, is sacrilege.