Steve Sarkisian reaffirms belief in Arch Manning, ability to impact winning amid struggle

After an offseason full of hype and excitement for Texas Longhorns quarterback Arch Manning, many experts are starting to pull back their praise. Still, head coach Steve Sarkisian believes in Manning’s talent and his ability to win games for the Longhorns.

Sarkisian spoke extensively about Manning in his press conference following the UTEP game. There, he broke down what he sees from the young quarterback and what makes him have that level of trust in him.

“I feel like we’ve done enough with him to have a pretty good understanding of who he is as a player and what he’s capable of,” Steve Sarkisian said. “And I know there’s a lot of football in there that’s high level, quality football. So, is my expectation of him as a player high? Yes. Do I expect him to play the best football of his career the first three games of this season? Probably not. That probably wouldn’t be fair, but our job as coaches is to work him towards that and so that he continually improves throughout the season, like all of our players on our team.”

In the first game of the season, against Ohio State, Manning struggled, but that was seen as forgivable given the opponent and situation. Those struggles have seemingly continued, though, against more manageable opponents in San Jose State and UTEP. That included a streak of 10 straight incompletions against UTEP. For the season on the whole, Manning is completing just 55.3 percent of his passes for 579 yards and six touchdowns to three interceptions. He’s also rushed for 112 yards and three touchdowns.

Texas has played a fourth of its regular season schedule now. Still, Sarkisian wants to give him more time before he considers making any kind of change or giving Manning a series off to reset. There’s still good there, after all, which the Longhorns coaching staff needs to make more consistently be what he produces.

“I think it was too early to say, ‘Oh, give him a series off.’ You know, he provides enough offense for us where I can go a different way, using his legs and provide offense that way,” Sarkisian said. “And, obviously, he scored two touchdowns with his legs today to take advantage of, and had a nice two-minute drive right there at the end the first half to score. So, there was a lot of good in there. I just know, and I think we all would agree, that there’s better in there that’s to come. Again, it’s a race to get there as fast as we can.”

Texas will round out non-conference play against Sam Houston State in Week 4. That’s another game where Arch Manning is expected to put up big numbers. After that, he’ll be turning his attention to SEC play.