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Steve Sarkisian threads the needle in his handling of Quinn Ewers and Arch Manning

Joe Cookby:Joe Cook•about 8 hours•

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Quinn Ewers, Arch Manning
Mark J. Rebilas-Imagn Images

The doubters that didn’t believe Texas would land Arch Manning became doubters that didn’t think both Manning and Quinn Ewers would stay on the Longhorns’ roster until Ewers left for the NFL.

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“He’ll transfer” was a common refrain. The quarterback that was referencing depended on the speaker.

“Arch will take over” was another one that was heard as early as 2023, even though Ewers was the starter and Maalik Murphy remained the second-stringer.

Though Ewers’ decision to return for the 2024 season complicated matters as Manning and his family (and, let’s face it, all of college football) didn’t expect for a quarterback like Ewers, who had done everything with an eye toward moving to the NFL as fast as possible, to wait a beat, Longhorns head coach Steve Sarkisian threaded the needle with how he handled the entire situation.

Now he gets to begin a new era of Texas football after a peaceful transition of power.

One tweet comes to mind that illustrates how little faith the college football world had in Sarkisian to complete this task while winning at a high level along the way.

Not only did both stay for 2023, Dean Wormer Stewart Mandel, but for 2024 as well.

Sarkisian got as much out of both Ewers and Manning over these past two years as he could possibly ask for. The Longhorn offense under Ewers reached the final four of the College Football Playoff in back-to-back years with No. 3 throwing for 6951 yards and 53 touchdowns on his way to a Big 12 Championship and an overtime away from a SEC Championship. Ewers will finish his career with a 27-9 record, good for fourth in school history. He will provide Sarkisian’s Texas with an example of another quarterback that found a home in the NFL after playing in his system.

Manning, though a third-stringer in 2023, received opportunities late in the year and entered the 2024 offseason as the clear No. 2 option. He played in 10 games, taking over for an injured Ewers versus UTSA and starting off his outing with a scintillating 67-yard touchdown run. He started the next two wins for Texas over ULM and Mississippi State, then became part of the Horns’ fourth-down offense during the season’s home stretch. He’ll go down as the first player to score in the return of the rivalry with Texas A&M after its 13-year absence.

There was nary a public issue throughout the entire process.

The off-field personas of Ewers and Manning, two college athletes who earned megastar status in the Name, Image, and Likeness world, could have made matters for the on-field effort more difficult. After all, Ewers joked about “who needs backup” in his Dr. Pepper commercials, but ran what he was going to say by Manning so he wasn’t shocked by the advertisement. Manning didn’t opt into being featured in the EA Sports College Football 25 video game that had Ewers on the cover immediately, only doing so late in the process and with a nice little payday to boot.

Yet there were no problems that arose at Texas from the presence of those two, a testament to the driven personalities of both players but also to the culture Sarkisian maintained in the quarterback room and in the entire locker room.

During the two seasons both quarterbacks worked with AJ Milwee, (another character in this story who deserves a considerable amount of credit) Texas achieved things not thought possible in 2021 when Sarkisian and company were trudging through a 5-7 season. The Longhorns entered the elite echelon of college football. Ewers cemented a strong legacy and now places near the top of the school record books. Manning captivated both Longhorn fans and the national football conversation for stellar play that functioned as chances to get his feet wet before the starting role became his.

Murphy was a casualty in the whole process, but he enjoyed a successful season as a starter at Duke and has now found another opportunity closer to home at Oregon State. Such is life in college football in 2025 as quarterbacks typically seek the fastest path to the field.

Texas didn’t have the typical quarterback situation. It took a deft hand to navigate a complicated scene most doubted Sarkisian had the capacity to handle.

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Sarkisian took the right step at every juncture in this process, avoiding calamity and controversy, keeping Texas’ title window open, and turning Austin into a destination for top-flight quarterbacks all while managing a process that would have seen lesser coaches fail.

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