How Texas plans to develop Arch Manning behind Quinn Ewers this season

On the latest episode of The Andy Staples Show for On3, Inside Texas’ Joe Cook joined the show to set the record straight regarding Quinn Ewers and Arch Manning.

While Manning is ridiculously talented, it’s still Ewers show according to Steve Sarkisian, but Cook touched on Manning’s progress as he continues his college football career with the Longhorns moving forward.

“Steve Sarkisian at the second signing day conference was asked about this,” Cook started. “Arch’s progress and where things fit. But he was pretty clear about saying, ‘No, Quinn’s the starter.’ Quinn, you can’t always take a lot from social media, but if you go to Texas’ social media and look, they’re featuring Quinn as if he’s the leader, this is his program, you know face of the program type thing. But of course, Arch Manning’s Arch Manning. He’s going to draw a lot of attention.

“There’s the famous picture from the Sugar Bowl media day that lacked some context, but still says a lot, where you see Quinn looking in the background and there’s a huddle basically around Arch. But with Maalik Murphy transferring out, going to Duke, I think that does make things a lot more clear. If there were three quarterbacks in this position group again entering spring, that’s a tough situation for Steve Sarkisian to handle. It’s tough for anybody to handle. It’s a challenge, it’s one that they love taking on, but it’s still a challenge nonetheless. With Quinn and Arch, Quinn’s going to be the starter, he’s going to be the No. 1 guy, Arch is going to be the backup, obviously. I think everybody can kind of see that.”

While that’s all well and good for Manning, there’s still opportunity in 2023, as Cook highlighted Ewers’ injury history as a path forward for the young quarterback.

“Quinn has missed games. One was because Dallas Turner landed on top of him, the other was because he had a bad bump against U of H. That’s what brought Murphy in for a couple games during the season. So if you’re Arch, not only are you kind of thinking, ‘Okay, my redshirt sophomore year, I’m going to be able to take control of this.’ You don’t want to go in because of an injury, but the track record’s the track record, and Quinn Ewers has missed five games in the past few seasons, so you know that there’s probably an opportunity,” Cook added. “I think it was really great for Sark to get Arch some snaps, not only against Texas Tech where they ran real offense, but also against Oklahoma State. Just getting him those snaps kind of shows everybody that there wasn’t an emphasis on redshirt year, because then it’s four games and that’s it. It was different. If it came down to it, maybe it was more than four, but the key was a development year. A year for him to learn to play college.

“For as talented as he is, Isidore Newman and Texas Football, even at practice, is a step up. But he was able to not only get some great development in practice, but get some game opportunity and it looks like if anything happens to Quinn, or if the situation allows for it thanks to the margin of the game, Arch is going to be able to play.”

Alas, Arch Manning has a bright future ahead of him, but 2024 is still Quinn Ewers’ time at Texas, and it will remain so until he’s either injured or replaced by Steve Sarkisian. Time will tell if it happens.