Jordan Rodgers highlights Arch Manning's lack of reps, poor footwork in Ohio State loss: 'I don't want to do a victory lap'

Last week, Jordan Rodgers was one of the few people who were trying to talk down some of the early hype around Texas QB Arch Manning. Now, after a poor debut yesterday in Columbus, Rodgers, while not wanting to be too proud about it, did get to say a bit of an I told you so.

During halftime of Sunday’s game of No. 13 South Carolina vs. Virginia Tech in Atlanta, Rodgers spoke about his previous comments about Manning, especially after yesterday’s outing for him in the 14-7 loss for No. 1 Texas at No. 3 Ohio State. Again, he didn’t mean it critically, but he said it was about what he expected to see when it came to Arch’s play early on.

“And I don’t want to do a victory lap, but I did say all week that the hype that we saw around this young man didn’t match the tape for what we saw. And what we saw was an inexperienced quarterback,” said Rodgers. “He still has a lot of football that he hasn’t played, a lot of scenarios and elite defenses. He doesn’t have enough reps in, so the timing was off, the footwork was off, the accuracy was off. That’s kind of what I expected.”

“Look, he’s got a lot of good football ahead of him. His story is far from being written right now, but it’s kind of what we expected from this Texas team and Arch early – at least in my opinion,” Rodgers said.

In the highly-anticipated top-three matchup, a lot of that doing with his arrival, Manning finished being 17-30 (56.7%) for 170 yards, a touchdown, and an interception, with another possibly thrown before being overturned, while also rushing for 38 yards. However, he made up for much of that statistically with some throws made in the fourth quarter during a comeback attempt for the Longhorns, as Manning began at 9-14 (64.3%) for 38 yards and the pick over the first three quarters of the game. That may have actually caused too much of an overcorrection with the public perception of him, but, nonetheless, it wasn’t a good game played yesterday by him, which Manning himself as well as Steve Sarkisian each said postgame.

Roman Harper agreed with Rodgers, but was also another to give note to the play of the Buckeyes’ defense, now coached by DC Matt Patricia, against him. They were ready from game one and made the season’s debut hard on Manning and the offense for Texas.

“A ton of credit goes to Matt Patricia, what he was able to build defensively for Ohio State,” said Harper. “Shoutout to Matt Patricia and Ohio State’s defense again really showing up in week one. They always say, at the beginning of the season, defense is usually ahead of the offense. That was definitely the case.”

As Rodgers said, and as we should all understand, there’s a lot of season left for Manning. But, that said, that opening performance could be an example of a cautionary tale when it comes to those kinds of preseason expectations, regardless of a player’s background, on someone as inexperienced as Arch was known to be coming in.