Greg McElroy defends leaving Arch Manning off his top 10 quarterbacks in college football

The 2025 NFL Draft is complete, which means fans and analysts alike are already looking ahead to the fall with predictions, projections and takes that they may or may not want to delete looking back after the season’s conclusion. In turn, preseason top-10 lists and other rankings are keeping discussions about college football alive heading into the meat of the offseason.

ESPN’s Greg McElroy joined the fun as well, releasing his preseason top 10 quarterbacks heading into the 2025 college football season on Monday. His list consists of Haynes King, LaNorris Sellers, Carson Beck, as well as Clemson‘s Cade Klubnik, claiming the top spot in McElroy’s list, among others.

One notable name was missing from the list — Texas quarterback Arch Manning — who many see as one of the top QBs in the country despite his lack of experience. McElroy addressed his omission early in his list, stamping the Longhorns QB1 with an ‘honorable mention’ tag heading into his first season as the main starter in Austin.

“I think he is poised to have an amazingly successful career, whether that’s a one-year career, two years, three years. However long he’s in Austin, assuming he’s there his whole career, I think he’s absolutely positioned to be tremendously successful,” McElroy explained. “That being said, he does not crack the top 10 just yet. Now, he makes our honorable mention list, which tells you how much we think about this young man.”

Manning threw for 939 yards, nine touchdowns and two interceptions during his redshirt freshman season in 2024. Most of that production came across three games in September while former Longhorns QB Quinn Ewers nursed an injury.

As McElroy pointed out, those games came against UTSA, Louisiana Monroe and Mississippi State. The Roadrunners ranked 71st in total defense (124th in pass defense), the Warhawks ranked 83rd and the Bulldogs ranked 126th. After that, Ewers took back over as the starter and Manning was used sparingly for the rest of the season.

“First-year starters for me, it’s very hard for me to ever justify putting a first-year starter ahead of guys that have actually done it when the bullets are flying,” McElroy continued. “And you can say, well, the bullets flew last year. … Last year in spot start situations [Manning] was tremendously good.

“A lot of really positive things about those performances, but there are also a few things that need to be cleaned up, and I think they will be this upcoming year when he elevates his play against quality competition. That’s when we’ll start to really make the evaluation.”

That evaluation will begin right away from Manning and the Longhorns this fall. Texas will kick its 2025 regular season off against the reigning national champion Ohio State Buckeyes during Week 1.