Steve Sarkisian: Saturday won't be a final exam for Maalik Murphy, Arch Manning

Texas starting quarterback Quinn Ewers suffered an AC joint sprain in the Longhorns’ 31-24 win over Houston on Saturday and will cause him to miss some time this season.

The Longhorns will now have to rely on their young and talented quarterback room, headlined by Maalik Murphy and Arch Manning. And on Monday, head coach Steve Sarkisian pulled back the curtain on how he and Texas’ staff are approaching their quarterback situation ahead of their matchup with BYU this weekend.

“I think in the we gotta take our time as a coaching staff, which we started on yesterday,” Sarkisian said. “What are the things that Maalki does well? What are the things that Arch does well? It’s not always about the idea of the play and putting it on a whiteboard, because there’s a lot of plays that look good. But what do they do well and how do we ensure okay, here’s the concepts that we think they run really well, they don’t have to run the whole playbook.”

Sarkisian revealed that both Manning and Murphy will receive first-team reps this week in preparation for Saturday’s game, but if the game was being played today Murphy would be the team’s starter.

Murphy entered the game in the fourth quarter versus Houston in Ewers’ absence, throwing just two pass attempts and completing one for a seven-yard gain. The physical presence of the redshirt freshman jumps off the page, towering at 6-foot-5, 238 pounds. But Manning also brings a lot to the table as the nation’s reining No. 1 recruit and top prospect of the 2023 class according to On3’s Industry Ranking.

“They need to run what they run really well and then how do we devise a plan that incorporates what they do well with the personnel, formation, motion, shifts, run game to tie it all together,” Sarkisian said. “That’s kind of how you do it. I think it’s important that they get confidence early is always helpful, but you never know how a game’s gonna go. These guys are elite competitors, I’m not concerned about them fighting though when adversity strikes.”

Sarkisian is tasked with getting his young quarterbacks as prepared as possible for Saturday’s game and putting them both in a position to succeed regardless of who gets the majority of the snaps, as one of the two signal callers will be tasked with the biggest test of their collegiate career thus far.

“But I do wanna make sure that I’m giving them the opportunity to do the things that they’ve shown us that they’re good at and they like because Saturday is going to be a test enough,” Sarkisian said. “It doesn’t need to be a final exam as far as let’s test them on things they might know or might not know. I want to test them on the stuff that I know they know really well, I hope they get 100%, this is an open book test. I hope they play great.”