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From Overalls to Overdrive: The Shift to Arch Manning and a new defense

by:RT Young•05/07/25
Steve Sarkisian and Arch Manning by Scott Wachter-Imagn Images
Texas head coach Steve Sarkisian watches quarterback Arch Manning warm up before a game against Texas Tech during the 2023 season. (Scott Wachter-Imagn Images)

Games in the Steve Sarkisian and Quinn Ewers era reminded me of a hard day’s work done in overalls. Those days are not always a ton of fun in the moment. There are moments where time moves slowly, but at the end of the day, you were proud of what you accomplished.

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Remember all the grind-it-out affairs in the Big 12 with the States of the world? The 20–10 win at Arkansas which was sealed with a turnover and game-winning drive embodied the style the Longhorns had grown accustomed to. 

These wins had their benefits. They built culture, they helped Sarkisian morph from an offensive guru into a “total football coach,” and they set the standard for a program on both sides of the ball. Two years of an elite defensive tackle rotation, experienced wide receivers, and a veteran game-manager quarterback allowed this style of play to flourish.

I don’t think we’re going to see a similar style of team in Austin in 2025.

If the Ewers era felt like building a deck or painting a house, the Arch Manning era is going to feel like standing inches away from the speakers at a face-melting concert. Manning will let it fly in ways Ewers didn’t, for better or worse. The longest catches of DeAndre Moore Jr. and Ryan Wingo’s 2024 season came from Manning. Arch himself produced the second-longest rush of the Texas season. But if there were moments Texas fans grew frustrated with Ewers’ checkdowns and swing passes, they might be begging Manning to throw a few more safe passes if he’s turnover-prone early in his career.

The defensive tackle rotation is young and talented, but green. And the pass catchers are going to be explosive, but still relatively fresh. Overall, my gut feel is it’s going to be a team that lives by the big play and gives up a few on the other side of the ball. The defense has elite players at edge, linebacker, and safety, so expect more sacks, turnovers, and defensive scores. But they don’t have literal game-wreckers in the form of Jahdae Barron and T’Vondre Sweat anymore at cornerback and defensive tackle. The opportunities to score quickly against Texas will be much more plentiful than they’ve been the past two years.

I wrote last year of Sark that his dream score in a win would be something like 31–6. Essentially, the Michigan game in Ann Arbor. Sark’s bent is in an NFL coaching style. He wants complementary football where decisive blows are struck early and the game is controlled late. The danger with that can be offensive lulls (still have nightmares about last year’s third quarters), gruelingly long possessions that don’t pay off, and stagnation.

This team will test Sark’s tendency. It will even cause some friction with the preferences he built in the Ewers era. If a comfortable, cruise-control, two-score win was the norm under Ewers, I’d expect a hair-on-fire 45–24 victory to be more common under Manning and a new defense. 

The experience will be as new for Sark as it is for the fans.

It will be explosive. It’ll be new. Sometimes it might even be testing. 

But it’s going to be a hell of a lot of fun.

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