Thursday, January 7, 2010

Just to Piss Off RockinnRetarded, Who Often Wistfully Fantasizes About Being the 4th Manning Brother



After pissing the regular season away, and during the bye-week before the inevitable, glorious one-and-done, we have some time to discuss an issue that has been really nagging us: why is Archie Manning so revered?

In 2008, he was voted the second-best Saint of all time by fans, and is fondly remembered by sportswriters and broadcasters as a great quarterback unfortunately placed on historically bad teams.  With such a horrible offensive line, its was downright miraculous that he threw for over 21,000 yds. during an 11 year career with the Saints.  But was he really all that good at pro football? He should really be compared to the universally reviled Aaron Brooks.

Saints fans grew to detest Aaron Brooks because of his maddening play:  he couldn't complete a clean 7 yard screen pass, but could throw 70 yd in-stride bombs with ease; in a crucial situation he was just as likely to fumble as he was to lead the game-winning drive.  He was run out of town after the lost-Katrina season.  But a sober asessment of these QBs needs to be statistically based.

In six seasons, AB the goat threw 120 touchdowns at a 1.4 per game clip while Archie the Great only had 115 (0.85 pg).  They both had very high turnover rates: Archie's 1.62 pg (156 INTs!) narrowly edges Brooks's 1.68 pg (59 fumbles!).  By any statistical measure we passingly glanced at, Aaron Brooks far bested or at least equaled Archie Manning.  As the common wisdom goes Archie was doomed by a swiss-cheese offensive line, taking 2.54 sacks pg.  But these excuses shouldn't excuse his play any more than they did David Carr's.  Brooks still suffered 2.46 sacks pg even while being protected by the likes of Willie Roaf.

Then again, in the NATIONAL FOOTBALL LEAGUE, statistics are for LOSERS.  We all know that in the NATIONAL FOOTBALL LEAGUE the only stat that matters is the team's record.  Well, Aaron Brooks went 38-44 in New Orleans as he led the team to its first playoff win in franchise history, while Archie Manning went 35-91-3 without nary a winning season.  By the way, that is the worst record for any QB given the chance to play at least 100 games.  As we state again, Aaron Brooks was run out of town while Archie Manning is thought of as one of the greatest in franchise history.

Maybe we are judging Archie unfairly because we never watched him actually play American Football.  For some historical perspective, we asked someone who actually did watch him, our father(s).  (T)he(y) replied, "Well, Archie was a great college player".  There you have it.  Archie Manning is beloved and overrated as a Saint simply because he excelled at a nearby college, beginning a trend that has been nobly upheld by Bobby Hebert and Jake Delhomme.  He was a regional hero turned uptown all-star, while Aaron Brooks was a quiet outsider who never connected with fans on a personal level.  As a Saint fan, we can only hope that the Bucs draft Tim Tebow and suck for 11 straight years, gifting us two division wins a season.

The slack given to Archie during his playing career has been extended.  He's a dull local commentator who has never been properly criticized for his helicopter stunt on Eli's draft day -- forcing a trade by stating which teams his son would or would not sign with.  While we don't necessarily have any problem with this, any other athlete (like, say Steve Francis) that does the same is resoundingly branded as an ungrateful, immature child and is never allowed to live the incident down.  Meanwhile, regarding Eli, SI's Dr. Z had this to say at the time:
No quarterback ever took a worse beating over a prolonged period of time than Archie Manning did when he was with the Saints.  Do you blame Archie for wanting to protect his kid from such a thing?
Burn, indeed.  If we ever have a job involving media contact, we will be sure to learn a good-ole-boy accent so we can reap the same benefits of lowered expectations and inherent likeability that Archie, Brett Farve, and G. Dubya take to the bank every day.  It is not that we dislike Archie, we just don't understand why the media and fans worship his actions and his playing career in a manner inconsistent with others that have done the same things.  In the end, being a good father and husband beats being a great professional QB any day.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hello

Can I link to this post please?

DBB said...

You can link to anything in the Blogosphere!

Anonymous said...

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