Why Arch Manning leaving Texas after Quinn Ewers returned never would have made sense

On Jan. 11, Texas quarterback Quinn Ewers posted a video to more than 200,000 followers on Instagram. In it, he signed a trading card with his face and added a message below.

“I’m coming back,” he wrote, holding the card up to the camera.

The top comment on the post?

“Yall gonna lose manning (sic),” it read, adding a pair of laughing emojis aimed at the Longhorns’ predicted misfortunes.

Manning, as in Arch Manning: five-star recruit, and the son of Cooper, nephew of Eli and Peyton and grandson of Archie. Ewers’ surprising decision was about chasing Texas’ first national title since 2005, but the commenter wasn’t alone in directing attention to college football’s most famous backup in an era in which there is no penalty for transferring.

Even before Ewers elected to return, Manning faced questions at the Sugar Bowl about whether he wanted to leave after barely seeing the field in his first season.

“It’s tough because you want to be out there playing with your boys,” Manning told The Athletic in July. “But just realizing there’s nowhere else I want to be, and it was my dream to play at Texas. I’m going to stick it out and play there eventually,”

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He made the same decision as Ewers: He was coming back. He was always coming back. Now, Manning is likely to make his first career start against Louisiana-Monroe on Saturday, as Texas coach Steve Sarkisian said Ewers is questionable to play after straining his oblique against UTSA.

“Arch is just another guy on our team, and the reason I’m able to do that is because that’s who Arch is every day,” Sarkisian said Monday. “He’s the selfless teammate. He cares about the guys on the team. He cares about Quinn. They’ve got a great relationship. He works his tail off. He wants to play good football for them because he knows how hard everybody’s working.

“So I literally don’t address it with him. I don’t address it with the team. He’s just part of the team.”

Arch Manning threw for 223 yards and had five total TDs versus UTSA. (Tim Warner / Getty Images)

There was a time when quarterbacks seeing the field before their second or third year was an anomaly. Now, it’s an expectation, at least for five-star prospects. When Manning’s name never appeared in the transfer portal, he bucked a decade of trends among college quarterbacks.

Transfer portal decisions are unique to every player, but as Manning enters what is expected to be his first start, we’re seeing the reasons why leaving would introduce more questions than answers and present more problems than solutions.

Though Manning has thrown only 23 passes in four appearances since arriving in 2023, things have largely gone according to plan at Texas — even if winning the starting job was delayed by a year because of Ewers’ return. Manning is still one good season away from crystallizing his status as a first-round draft pick, and he has plenty of time to do it, with three years of eligibility remaining after this season. His path to the field became clearer when last year’s backup, Maalik Murphy, transferred to Duke, and another year working behind Ewers was only going to make the results better once it was time for his turn in the spotlight.

His growing pains have mostly been able to come in closed practices. They haven’t had to come in nationally televised games like young quarterbacks who are asked to be saviors like freshmen Dylan Raiola at Nebraska and DJ Lagway at Florida. But when he has been given the opportunity, he’s excelled. On Saturday, thrust into extended duty against an overmatched UTSA team, he threw a touchdown pass on his first attempt, scooted past a safety for a 67-yard touchdown run and finished with three more touchdown passes in a 56-7 blowout win.

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With Quinn Ewers injured, Arch Manning tallies five TDs vs. UTSA

Now, if he starts Saturday, he’ll do it for a Texas team ranked No. 1 in the AP poll for the first time since 2008, when Colt McCoy was under center for the Longhorns. McCoy, by the way, didn’t play his first season at Texas either.

Since high school, everything the Mannings have done with Arch points to a big-picture approach, aiming for a lengthy NFL career, not the quickest path to the playing field or the best way to earn money from his fame in college. Manning’s recruitment was straight out of 1995: If you don’t have DMs, reporters and coaches can’t slide into them, and it’s easier for coaches and parents to control coaches’ access to you, too.

He’s a non-factor on social media. He barely spoke to reporters about his college decision, a family strategy borne out of a desire to allow him to live a more normal high school life. His family background affords him the ability to shrug off the obligations of chasing NIL money, as does his status as a likely NFL Draft pick after he does get on the field.

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Arch Manning’s unique approach to recruiting

Now, his decision to stay patient in college is old-school, too. NIL money is the invisible hand guiding players into and out of the transfer portal, but the success that his family has enjoyed means money was never going to influence his decision. As of last December, his only NIL deal was an exclusive trading card partnership with Panini America, despite erroneous reports that he was earning millions as Texas’ third-string quarterback. After initially declining to be included, he elected to opt into his name, image and likeness being used in EA Sports’ College Football 25.

Manning has done little to nothing to “grow his brand” and yet the brand he was born with has made him one of the five biggest names in college football.

Ewers returned to Texas with national title aspirations in Texas’ first season in the SEC after reaching the College Football Playoff a season ago and narrowly losing to Washington in the semifinals. His faith in Sarkisian and the team returning to Austin has thus far been rewarded, and Manning saw the same thing.

If the program had been on shakier ground entering the SEC, it stands to reason Manning might have entertained entering the portal. But Texas is as strong as it’s been since the heyday of Mack Brown in the 2000s. Why would Manning leave and adjust to new coaches, a new play caller, a new offense and a new head coach for what would almost certainly be a worse team?

And there’s the uncomfortable reality that Ewers, who could be the first quarterback taken in the 2025 NFL Draft, has been one of the more injury-prone QBs in college football, even as he’s developed into one of the best. When he strained his oblique Saturday, he did it as the betting favorite for the Heisman Trophy. In 2022, he missed a shade under four games after injuring his shoulder in a close loss to Alabama. In 2023, he missed two Big 12 games with a sprained AC joint in his shoulder. Texas turned to Murphy to keep its Big 12 and national title hopes on track and survived an upset bid from Kansas State while Ewers healed.

Now, Ewers is injured again, and Manning looked like America’s best backup quarterback in relief against UTSA.

Regardless of Ewers’ readiness to play, handing Manning the keys for a game against ULM in which Texas is favored by 45 points is the prudent decision. The next two opponents, Louisiana-Monroe and Mississippi State, are unlikely to test the Longhorns, and Ewers seems likely to return by the time the national championship pressures increase when Texas’ date with Oklahoma in the Red River Showdown arrives on Oct. 12 before Georgia comes to town on Oct. 19.

When Ewers stayed for one more unexpected year in Austin, it was easy to expect Manning to act like every other quarterback and develop a drifting eye to find a new program. But Manning leaving Texas never made sense. His college football experience is not like every other quarterback’s.

Why wouldn’t his decision-making be different?

(Top illustration: Dan Goldfarb / The Athletic; photos: Eric Gay / Associated Press; Tim Warner / Getty Images)