2 weeks Ago
By Kyle Golik Texas quarterback Arch Manning ’s time will come when he will be the undisputed starter. Why can’t that time be now? I get current starter Quinn Ewers has played at a level that will make him fly off the board within the first 10 picks of the 2025 NFL Draft, if he chooses to declare. I get the notion a starter shouldn’t lose his job outright, especially with Ewers' profile, due to injury.
This has nothing to do with Manning’s surname but more with Manning’s ability to go right in and make the Texas Longhorn offense roll making the transition seamless. Manning, in relief of Ewers, finished 9 for 12 passing for 223 yards with four touchdown passes. Manning also displayed his ability to be shifty on the ground on his 67-yard touchdown run - the longest touchdown run by a Texas quarterback since Vince Young’s 80-yard touchdown run against Oklahoma State in 2005.
“There's nothing like being in the game and playing, and playing in front of 105,000 people is not the easiest thing to do. I was really proud of Arch and what he was able to do,” Sarkisian remarked in a post-game interview , glowing about Manning’s performance. “What we try to do is really identify the things that each quarterback does well,” Sarkisian said about his quarterback preparation .
“Sometimes we prioritize different plays predicated on the quarterback. We ask them a lot of questions. Every Friday night, we sit with the quarterbacks and we go through the call sheet with them.
We have them pick their favorite plays by situation, whether it’s base game plan, third down, red area. We mark those down so that if the backup goes in like Arch, we knew the plays that he picked that he liked going into this game plan.” © Aaron E.
Martinez/American-Statesman / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images Sarkisian’s game plan with the quarterback position has changed. Sarkisian remarked about Ewers status saying there was no structural damage on the no contact injury to Ewers abdominal area also being compared. Sarkisian expects Ewers to be “week-to-week.
” Manning has two perfect warm up games to get fully ready with the playbook and experience being a starter with UL-Monroe, Mississippi State, and the Longhorns first bye week. Beyond the bye week, Texas has two titanic clashes with Oklahoma at the Cotton Bowl in Red River and what could be a No. 1 vs.
No. 2 clash with Georgia in consecutive weeks. The longer Ewers injury is, the more it benefits Manning at taking ownership of the starting job.
That is obvious. I don’t know how confident I would be going into Red River or in a No. 1 vs.
No. 2 clash with a quarterback just coming off of injury. I feel Sarkisian wouldn’t want to interrupt the momentum his Longhorns built either.
In a lot of ways, Sarkisian needs to have a conversation with his mentor Nick Saban about how he handled Tua Tagovailoa, the young prodigy, and Jalen Hurts, the veteran. Obviously Saban made changes based on Hurts’ performance against Georgia in the 2017-18 National Championship and Tagovailoa’s high ankle sprain in the 2018 SEC Championship Game. I can hardly remember when a coach had a situation like Sarkisian that had two bonafide alphas at quarterback that performed at the level each did.
Nothing comes to the top of my mind. It is easy to gloss over Manning’s performance against UTSA, but this is a program that has won 32 games between 2021-2023 and their head coach Jeff Traylor is always a trendy pick for a Power 4 job. That isn’t anything to gloss over.
Sarkisian knows he very well could set a precedent with this situation when recruiting high end quarterbacks. Sarkisian could give his opponents the blueprint to negatively recruit against him. In a perfect situation Ewers needs a week and is back, but I don’t feel that is going to be the case here.
This is Manning’s opportunity to demonstrate that his celebrated prep career was worth the prodigy label, so far he has earned it. Now the next thing about to be his, is the starting job, it might not be how he wanted to get it, but opportunity often doesn’t wait for the best time to present itself..
