In the end....Archie Manning wins

[Boltx]

Not only do we not get a title....pretty soon we won't even have a fucking team!


I don't want to recap all the intricacies of the last 15 years of "negotiating," but holy fuck, is this the best that the city & team can do? Fuck everybody involved.

[Peremptor]

Why be bitter? Move on brother. That's life.

Or well... lets keep it to the board at least... whatever. Sucks but that's that.

[Boltx]

Sadly, Spanos is making is all too easy to move on.

[6025]

He, and everyone here, has earned that right to be bitter. Preach on, Boltx.

[TTK]

Archie may have been right but F him for not having the guts to call out Deano and say it.

F Spanos and F Archie.

[6025]

Archie may have been right but F him for not having the guts to call out Deano and say it.

F Spanos and F Archie.

There seems to be some kind of code where you can't publicly trash any owner, regardless of how fucked up they are. All of the other owners seem to practice this and it extends down to everyone under the NFL umbrella. Look at guys like Beurlein and Marcus Allen, basically blackballed by their own owner (Evil Al) and yet to this day they don't say anything bad about them. Archie basically walked right up to the line and tried to say "The Spanos family is so fucked up we're willing to derail Eli's career to take this stand".

[richpjr]

No Archie was not right. He is a douche who raised two douches of his own.

[Wheels]

I honestly think it was more a power play to get Eli into NY than anything else. Sure, in hindsight he seems correct, but I don't think he was predicting anything. We've gone over this before. The team was good enough to win the title for about 5 years there, and just f'd it up because we have the shittiest luck of just about any sports town. I don't think that means Archie was a prophet. If we had won it all say during the 2006 year, then he was dead wrong. We just never got our lucky run the way Eli did, or like the Ravens a few years ago, probably one of the crappiest teams to ever win a superbowl. The Giants barely made the playoffs the 2 seasons his team won it all, and our Chargers missed the playoffs many years with similar records.

[Savage Lizard]

I honestly think it was more a power play to get Eli into NY than anything else. Sure, in hindsight he seems correct, but I don't think he was predicting anything. We've gone over this before. The team was good enough to win the title for about 5 years there, and just f'd it up because we have the shittiest luck of just about any sports town. I don't think that means Archie was a prophet. If we had won it all say during the 2006 year, then he was dead wrong. We just never got our lucky run the way Eli did, or like the Ravens a few years ago, probably one of the crappiest teams to ever win a superbowl. The Giants barely made the playoffs the 2 seasons his team won it all, and our Chargers missed the playoffs many years with similar records.

Exactly this! It was NEVER about the Chargers or the Spanos family with the Mannings. It was ALL about getting little ECry to New York. Whoever was at #1 was going to get trashed by the asshole Mannings to get their way. They knew they could throw their tantrum and make a trade happen.

[ArtistFormerlyKnownAsBKR]

I don't think that's necessarily true. If it had been Pittsburgh, NE, SF, GB or maybe even Dallas I'm pretty sure the Mannings would have been on board. They didn't have anything against San Diego as a city. They just didn't think the Spanos' were committed to creating a winning platform to make Eli a star (and all of the endorsements that went along with it). AJ Smith was a unknown quantity, they hadn't been successful in putting a stadium upgrade in place, historically they hadn't treated stars very well, there was a lack of leadership (the only way you have two GM-Coach feuds you allow to boil over), etc. Archie languished in NO bc they couldn't put a good team around him. At that point there was no certainty that the team would be come a serious contender, or if it did, to keep it going.

They were wrong about the former, but in the final analysis completely right about the latter.

[6025]

Solid analysis BKR. In addition, I remember reading somewhere that Peyton didn't like how the Chargers org handled the whole Leaf fiasco (don't remember if it was an article or a poster claiming they read said article, but the framework of it was Manning and Leaf actually were friends). Maybe a bit unfair to completely blame the Chargers, but the last place Leaf should have went to was the Chargers, they were completely ill equipped to handle him.

[Lightningwill_420]

The Mannings were right. We booed the wrong person. Dean Spanos is a loser and a dick, and Archie knew it. Perhaps the Donald tipped the Mannings off.