Olivia seemed unimpressed. She kept staring at a tiny pond that was in the back. “Where are all the ducks?” she said. “It’s cold, so I guess they flew south,” Archie answered with a shrug.

Olivia nodded. “They went south?” she said. “Well, so am I.”

That off-season, the Mannings returned to New Orleans for good.

By the time Archie retired, Eli, who was born in 1981, was 4 and the family had moved into what would become known around New Orleans as “the Manning house.” Sitting in the middle of the Garden District, it is a historic home and remains a frequent stop on tours of the area. It has high ceilings, pretty flowers in the yard, a swimming pool and a view from the backyard of another stately New Orleans house that was once home to the musician Trent Reznor and is currently occupied by the actor John Goodman.

When the three Manning boys were young, though, their home was mostly a place for sports. Most memorably for the boys, there was a game they called ’Mazing Catches — “No ‘a,’ ” Cooper said — which involved Archie standing on the porch and firing passes that were just out in front of the boys as they ran across the lawn. “If it was a little wet and you could dive and slide, that was the big play,” Eli said. “We were probably a little spoiled having a professional quarterback throwing to us.”

Even though Archie was no longer playing, his popularity did not wane. He had moved into broadcasting, working as a game analyst on the Saints’ radio network and serving as a spokesman for several companies. Eli said he did not remember a time when his father did not have people coming up to him asking for autographs.

“As a kid, it was just something that happened,” Eli said. “That was just what my dad did. It was normal, like — O.K., so, should I go up and ask my friends’ dads for their autographs, too?”

When it came to sports, Archie’s general philosophy was to avoid being overbearing, and so he rarely coached his sons’ teams and, if he did, it was usually as an assistant. There was one time, though, when he was a head coach because there were not enough other fathers who volunteered.