The Arch Manning era at Texas has finally begun as the youngest member of the greatest family of NFL quarterbacks in the history of the sport. He took his first in-game snaps during the third quarter of the team’s rivalry game against the Texas Tech Red Raiders. The crowd was electric as the highly touted recruit took the field and led the offense in garbage time.
Manning, generally the third-string quarterback for the Longhorns, was moved to the backup role after an injury to the team’s regular backup on a kickoff return earlier in the game. In a bizarre stroke of happenstance, backup quarterback Maalik Murphy sustained an injury while standing on the sideline as players careened off the field. That paved the way for the young Manning to take the number two spot on the depth chart.
With the Longhorns being led to a 50-7 lead at halftime by starting quarterback Quinn Ewers, Head Coach Steve Sarkisian made the decision to bring Manning onto the field for some much-needed experience and to commence the debut of the school’s most exciting prospect.
Manning didn’t make a ton of impact in the game, as the fate was basically sealed when he entered, but he did show that he could hold his own against NCAA Division 1 defenses. He also showed, coincidentally, that fans are incredibly excited to see what the future has in store for the fabled brother of Peyton and Eli.
Sarkisian spoke about the moment after the game, saying, “I’ve never seen a quarterback go into the game as a backup . . . when Arch went in, I mean the crowd was buzzing. We had to try to quiet the crowd.”
With this commanding win, the Texas Longhorns have reached the Big 12 championship game. They are now likely only one win away from reaching the College Football Playoffs and receiving a chance top win the National Championship.
Sarkisian said, according to ESPN, “Awesome. It was a great night. A great celebration. Proud of everybody who put a lot of work in to get us to this point. But we’re not done. We stubbed our toe (against Oklahoma) early in October. We couldn’t afford to stub our toe again.”
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Sark also spoke about his team’s impressive resume in a quote shared by Fox News. He said, “I won’t back off the fact that I think we have the best win in the country this year. I think going into Tuscaloosa, Alabama, and beating them by double digits — I’ve said this before, and I know we’re going into that league next year — if it were that easy, then other teams in the SEC would have done it the other 53 games that they went 52-1. So I’m proud of our guys for what we’ve accomplished up to this point to the season. We’ll see how the dust settles next week, but we’ve got to handle our business.”
The featured image is from a screenshot from the embedded video.