With redshirt freshman quarterback Arch Manning’s first official start against Lousiana-Monroe, there were high hopes placed on the young Longhorn to replicate junior quarterback Quinn Ewers’ success. While Texas conquered the Warhawks with an impressive 51-3 victory, the Longhorns’ offense seemed to be a bit off in the hands of Manning.
Manning completed 15 passes out of 29 attempts holding 258 yards. He also threw two interceptions, with the first one coming off his first drive. However, head coach Steve Sarkisian wants to take Manning’s mistakes and turn them into stepping stones for the quarterback’s career.
“To think he was going to come out and play a perfect game. I don’t think anybody in here thought that,” Sarkisian said. “I thought he was going to prepare really well, work really hard, and do everything he could to play good football. He was going to have some lessons learned and I think that that’s what tonight was about.”
The first-time starter was inconsistent in the pocket in comparison to the more seasoned Ewers. While Manning showed early on in the game that he could throw explosive passes downfield with an impressive 56-yard pass to junior wide receiver Isaiah Bond in the first quarter, Manning ultimately had a hard time replicating these deep throws to his targets and even had some difficulty with easy pass-offs to tight ends and running backs.
Despite the difficulty in the passing game, Manning showed a lot of promise for a young quarterback. Even Ewers had an interception at the end of his first drive of his first starting game for the Longhorns in 2022, also against ULM. Manning explained that the best thing he can do is to try and forget the bad plays and continue to move forward.
“Obviously it’s a little easier said than done to just forget about those things, but I think that’s all you can do, is move on and keep trying to help your team win in any way,” Manning said. “So you just got to flush it.”
Texas relied heavily on running the ball to win the matchup with five rushing touchdowns for 239 rushing yards between six players. After coming back from an injury last week, junior running back Jaydon Blue was a vital part of Texas’ offense accumulating 124 rushing yards in 25 attempts and held four of the seven total Texas touchdowns, with three of them coming on the ground. Blue explained that while he was excited to get the ball so much this game, his main priority was to take some stress off of Manning.
“The thing I tried to do tonight was take as much pressure off of him as I can by running the ball,” Blue said.
Luckily for the Longhorns, ULM redshirt junior quarterback General Booty could not connect in the passing game either. Booty went 8-19 for only 42 yards. Part of this is due to Texas’ intensified defensive pressure in the interior and holding the Warhawks to a total of 111 yards.
As Ewers’ return date is still up in the air, Texas will head into their first week of SEC play with a matchup of Mississippi State Saturday with the starting quarterback for the Longhorns unknown. After today’s matchup, Manning is already taking notes about what he needs to do to be successful next week.
“(My goal is to) continue to try and take what’s there, not to force anything, the shots will come with (Sarkisian’s) offense, so just try and move the ball forward every play, and one play at a time,” Manning said.
