re: Why is Archie Manning going down as a great quarterback?

I hate defending Archie, but come on... the modern passing game hadn't been invented yet. We were just barely crawling into the modern era. Look at the top 3 in the Heisman in his senior year:

Plunkett: 211/388, 2980 yds, 19/19 TD/INT
Theismann: 155/268, 2429 yds, 16/14 TD/INT
Manning: 121/233, 1481 yds, 14/14 TD/INT

It was just a different era. I do think Ole miss fans overrate him, just because he was the last time Ole Miss was relevant, but he was still a very good QB. And certainly the best they've had in the modern era.

Though I will use this as a moment to point out how terribly underrated Bert Jones is/was. That was the 1970 Heisman stats. Here's Jones in 1972:

110/218, 1536 yds, 14/7 TD/INT

Pretty similar to Archie, and then Jones would explode in the pros. He's win the MVP in 1976 by leading the league in passing. Had he not suffered some killer injuries, he'd be talked about in the same league as Staubach and Stabler. He really only had three years as a starter before injuries derailed his career, back when you didn't come back from knee injuries. During his brief 3 years as a starter his average line was 211/360, 2758 yds, 20/9 TD/INT. He went 31-11 as a starter.

It's not that Archie is overrated, it's that Bert Jones is underrated. The Ruston Rifle was better.