Steve Sarkisian shuts down Arch Manning injury rumors: 'He doesn't have any'

Rumors that Arch Manning is battling an injury began to circulate on Saturday after a video of the Texas quarterback wincing while throwing the ball surfaced online. On Monday, Texas head coach Steve Sarkisian shut down the rumors.

“He doesn’t have any,” Sarkisian said when asked if Manning is experiencing pain while passing. “I don’t know. I’ve never filmed any of you guys when you’re using the restroom. So, I don’t know what faces you make when you’re doing that.”

In Texas’ 38-7 win over San Jose State on Saturday, Manning completed 19-of-his-30 pass attempts for 295 yards and four touchdowns, compared to just one interception. Manning also ran in a score in the blowout victory.

It was a bounce-back performance for Arch Manning, who received significant criticism after only completing 56.7% of his passes for 170 yards in Texas’ season-opening loss to Ohio State. Manning threw a touchdown and an interception against the Buckeyes.

Manning didn’t need to hear any outside noise to know he needed to improve. Even after his step up against San Jose State, Manning was far from satisfied.

“Once again, not very good. We’ve got to clean up a lot of things,” Manning said after the game. “Some guys made plays, which is good, but overall it was a little sloppy. … I thought I made more plays and attacked more, but it was still sloppy all around.”

Manning is a tough critic. Steve Sarkisian was far more optimistic in his evaluation of Manning’s performance on Saturday.

“He had a really good game today,” Sarkisian said. “He took advantage of some throws down the field. Lesson learned on a protection breakdown — forcing the ball — but we’re going to have some of those growing pains. I thought he used his legs well, scored a touchdown, threw it downfield, and created some explosive plays.”

Since it played Ohio State in Week 1, Texas will have another two weeks of ramp-up games before it begins SEC play. Up next, the Longhorns will square off against UTEP.

Although Texas will be the heavy favorite in the in-state matchup, it shouldn’t overlook the Miners. After all, this past weekend, USF reminded college football fans nobody is safe from Group-of-Five upsets. Sarkisian is excited for his team to continue to get better.

“The goal for us is to improve,” Sarkisian said on Saturday. “We’re going to celebrate this thing for 24 hours. On Monday, I’m going to come in here and have a good, bad, and ugly, and I’m going to have a bullet-pointed list of things we need to improve upon and that’s what we’ll do over the next week.”