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The most obvious area on offense where Texas can improve with Arch Manning at the helm

by: Justin Nash08/16/25
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Sara Diggins/American-Statesman / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

Arch Manning enters his third year under Steve Sarkisian as the lead signal caller for the Longhorns. While there is a ton of hype that comes with his name, some earned and some not, there is one specific part of his game the Longhorns hope will be an area of improvement compared to previous seasons.

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To say that Quinn Ewers struggled throwing the deep ball in his first season would be an insult to the word struggling. That said, if you went off of the industry standard of throws of 20+ yards and looked at the splits, you would see 12 for 48 and say “this guy is being overly harsh”.

Before we go further, close your eyes and picture a deep ball being thrown. There is a 99.9% chance you were thinking of a fly route on the outside, or a post route hitting the deep middle, or maybe even a corner route. It’s likely nobody pictured a 20-yard out route or a 20-yard dig.

If you define a 20 yard pass as a deep ball, Ewers was serviceable but unimpressive at 7.3 yards/attempt. Change it to 25+ yards? That number drops to 3-for-34 with 3.7 yard/attempt. The 2022 season was an abysmal year for the deep ball.

Now credit does need to be given to Ewers as he took an 8.8% deep ball rate and improved it to 31.3% in 2023 (13.4 Y/A) and 33.3% in 2024 (11.3 Y/A). His passer rating went from 17.9 on 25+ yard throws in 2022 to 98.4 in 2023.

While on a smaller sample size, Manning is on another planet when throwing these 25+ yard passes. Good for a 42.9% completion rate, Manning also leads the Longhorns since 2016 in catchable balls (71.4%) and yards/attempt (20.6).

To make it real simple, Manning’s yards per attempt in his three games with extended action — UTSA, ULM, and Mississippi State — was a blistering 11.2 yards/attempt. He also notched eight touchdowns to two interceptions.

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The people on Earth that might appreciate this change the most? The Texas Longhorn receiving corps. The sample size may not be all that large, but the sampling Manning provided hints at the potential for massive improvement in a key part of Sark’s offense in 2025.

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