Steve Sarkisian reveals his initial impressions of Arch Manning's first start at Texas
Texas Longhorns head coach Steve Sarkisian shared his first impressions, before having the chance to watch film, on Arch Manning after his first career start against ULM.
Arch Manning has been one of the most highly anticipated prospects at the quarterback position. To this point, however, he has acted as a backup to Quinn Ewers at Texas. With Ewers being injured, that forced Manning into action as the starter.
“We went into the gameplan that we felt like we had to be a little bit aggressive down the field with the style of play that they were getting,” Steve Sarkisian said. “He took his shots. We hit them, and we missed a couple. One, Silas Bolden made a great catch and they overturn it. One off the fingertips of Jaydon Blue up the sidelines. A couple other contested catches I think with [Ryan] Wingo and Isaiah [Bond] downfield.”
The game against ULM ended up being a relatively easy 51-3 win. For his part, Arch Manning completed 15 of 29 passes for 258 yards and two touchdowns. However, he did also have two interceptions.
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“When you get into that mode a little bit, sometimes you can start to get a little bit greedy. That’s a challenging thing, especially a guy making his first career start, because you feel like you’re just hitting them, and you want to keep hitting those things,” Sarkisian said.
“So, to be fair to him, maybe we should have found some completions in there to keep his rhythm. I thought we kind of I’d that there at the end of the third quarter. Hit a slant. Hit a couple similar type throws. Because I’d like that completion percentage to be a little higher than it was tonight, but the gameplan was a little bit big-little in that way. When it’s set that way when those shots aren’t there, having the ability to check the ball down, I think that’s something he’ll see there’s more value in some of those instead of throwing up that post, maybe check it down to the running back and create plays that way.”
Ultimately, Arch Manning may not have been as consistent as Steve Sarkisian would have liked but he’s still a very young quarterback. Because of that, it’s important that Manning is able to grow and learn from the game.
“Learning lessons, right? To think he was gonna come out and play a perfect game, I don’t think anybody in here thought that,” Sarkisian said. “We thought he was gonna prepare really well, work really hard, do everything he could to play good football, he was gonna have some lessons learned, and I think that’s what tonight was about.”
Next week, the Texas Longhorns will host the Mississippi State Bulldogs in their first SEC game. For the time being, however, it’s unclear if Arch Manning will be asked to start again or if Quinn Ewers is going to be healthy enough to return.