Aaron Murray 'not sold' on Arch Manning as top NFL Draft prospect

Many are already predicting success for Arch Manning in his first season as a full-time starter at Texas, with some early NFL mock drafts projecting him as high as the No. 1 pick. But former Georgia quarterback Aaron Murray isn’t ready to go that far.

During a recent appearance on Sirius XM Radio’s SEC This Morning podcast, Murray said that he isn’t even sold on Manning as a top quarterback prospect in the draft at all. He explained his reasoning being that Manning was not able to win the starting job from Quinn Ewers, who fell to the seventh round of this year’s NFL Draft.

Murray claimed that Ewers was “holding Texas back” from competing for a national championship last season. The Longhorns made it to the semifinals of the College Football Playoff and lost to eventual champion Ohio State. His logic seemed to be that if Manning couldn’t beat out Ewers, he must not be a better player.

“I am not sold, like so many of the other people are, that this guy is going to be the number one pick in NFL draft, that he’s going to just be unbelievable, that he’s going to be the next coming of Peyton and Eli, but that’s mobile,” Murray said. “…I thought Quinn did some good stuff at times last season, but let’s be honest, Texas had probably the second or third best roster in America, probably the second or third. Why were they not competing for a national championship?

“It was because Quinn was holding them back. Quinn did not perform to the level that I thought he could, and then you see now in the NFL Draft, I mean, he gets drafted in the seventh round? So even NFL scouts are saying, like, this guy’s just maybe not as good as anticipated coming out as a recruit, or maybe even two years ago.”

Manning is the nephew of former NFL quarterbacks Peyton and Eli Manning and the former No. 1 overall prospect in the 2023 class according to the On3 Industry Ranking, a weighted average that utilizes all four major recruiting media companies. It’s not unreasonable to think he could have developed in his two years as a back up compared to when he first entered college.

Manning also stepped in last season for an injured Ewers, who went down against UTSA. Manning entered in the second quarter of that game and finished with five total touchdowns. He went on to start the next two games, including completing 83.9% of his passes in a win against Mississippi State.

Yet Murray still isn’t convinced that he can put up those numbers consistently. The fact that he sat behind Ewers still looms large in his mind, and it’s why he still needs to see it to believe it.

“If you are so good and everyone has you projected number one pick in the NFL Draft, come 2026, why in the hell are you not playing above a seventh-round quarterback?” Murray said. “If Steve Sarkisian knows what he’s doing and he knows how good their roster is, which I’ve talked to a lot of coaches and a lot of different teams, and I asked them, like, what are the top rosters? Ohio, State, Texas, and probably Georgia. What was holding them back? Quinn Ewers. Why was Arch not playing? It’s like that rubs me the wrong way a little bit.”