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What the advanced statistics say about Arch Manning vs. Sam Houston State

by: Justin Nash09/22/25
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Arch Manning (Will Gallagher/Inside Texas)

Arch Manning was a popular choice for the media to build up as a Heisman contender in the offseason. After a shaky week one performance at Ohio State, we saw many of those same media members offload their Manning stock. That continued after the San Jose State and UTEP games. However, the Sam Houston State game might be a sign that you should buy into Manning once again.

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First, let’s look at some of the advanced stats from his Sam Houston State performance alongside another game of his.

The top stats are from the 2024 Mississippi State game. The lower set of statistics is from the Sam Houston State contest. There can be an argument made that we just watched Manning’s best performance as a Texas Longhorn.

The start of the Sam Houston State game did leave a good amount to be desired, and ironically it was his worst start to a game according to on-target throw rate. However bad the start may have been, every single throw after the first few minutes of game clock was an on-target throw. In a game where Manning needed a confidence booster, he received that in spades.

You might think it’s foolish to compare Mississippi State to Sam Houston State considering the significant amount of losses from last year’s Bearkat defense and the overall talent disparity. While that is generally going to be correct, let’s not ignore that last year’s Mississippi State team was 2-10 overall and 0-8 in the SEC. They just weren’t good.

So the great news here is if you wanted to see Manning have another Mississippi State level game, you just got it. Manning was making excellent throws all night. Take this one for example. Manning knows he has more rushers than blockers and goes to the hot route or man beater.

If someone wanted a negative angle on this outing, there are lingering questions about if Manning can perform like this against higher levels of competition. Until Manning goes out and has a great game versus a solid defense, that question will remain.

If the strength of the opponent is the end-all-be-all to the argument, why did Manning struggle vs a lesser UTEP team? Last week we looked at what went wrong versus the Miners, and when it went wrong: the second quarter.

When we remove that good for nothing quarter, Manning jumps to the middle of the SEC pack with numbers similar to Joey Aguilar and John Mateer. The fun part about this is those players have looked good and are getting a ton of hype.

And even if we remove the disastrous 2nd quarter against UTEP, Manning’s number still have a lot of room for growth. Maybe we saw that growth against Sam Houston.

If Manning has found a rhythm, and all the previous errors are behind him, it is really fun to think about what a 100% locked-in Manning could look like the rest of 2025.

Either way, the weak opponents are gone. It’s time for Manning to face some more big boy defenses.

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