Archie is pretty intense. I've met him and his wife. His life story is pretty remarkable. I think he definitely carries grudges.
Big fan of him as a player (looking back...). People may not realize he held the SEC single game total yards record from 1970 until last uear when Johnny Touchdown took it away and obviously there were some big time rules changes that made that possible.
Neither Eli nor Peyton really look or play like Archie, maybe Eli throws a little more like him that Peyton.
Archie spent a good part of his early (1971-1977) career running around being chased by enemy defenders while his porous line just fell apart. He had multiple offensive coordinators and coaches. The Saints hired an astronaut (seriously) as a GM at one point. He finally got a good offensive cast around him 1978-80 and then he was faced with an historically bad defense (even to this day) and a drug scandal in the Saints locker room.
Also, like Joe Namath, he blew out knees, shoulders, you name it, and so he lost a good deal of his incredible running ability and arm strength by the time he finally got some decent support around him.
Somehow despite all this he was the NFC Player of the Year in 1978 and he was the highest paid NFL player (whoo-hoo, $600,000) in that 1978-1980 era.
In 1971, when he took over Tulane Stadium in his very first game he beat a heavily favored perennial NFCW Champion LA Rams team, scoring himself on a QB run on the very last play of the game. Needless to say New Orleans was crazy over him. - That was the highlight of his Saints career, and I do not exaggerate.
What would he have done with a Don Coryell? Or maybe a Tom Landry (and that incredible Cowboys line) or a Sid Gillman? It's not just the pistol, there were football minds in his day who could have worked wonders, maybe sent him to the hall of fame.
Same happened with HOF'er Tarkenton, at least to the extent he got to play for a great coach (Bud Grant) and on the right side of one the great defensive units of all time.
The other half of the Archie discussion (yes, there is definitely such a topic in LA & MS bars, pubs and living rooms) is that he is remembered glowingly by Ole Miss and Saints fans who knew very little winning tradition.
The facts are that Archie lifetime only had:
* Three full seasons
* 55 completion %
* 3.4 TD%
* 4.8 INT%
* 35-101-3 record as a starter - now think about that, he lost 101 games a starter. Man.
He also lost the last 14 starts of his career. He went 4-33 in his last 37. Without exception, he lost every big game he was in where he could have pulled the Saints out of mediocrity and into some level of decency. This is not the stuff greatness, I'm afraid.
I will say this about Archie and whether it's the pistol or the read option we're discussing, or even the shotgun, or any variety of plays available to QBs today - the man was a master at the sneak, the fake and the rollout. He also threw sidearmed.
