College football rumors: Arch Manning’s start at Texas, Georgia and Ohio State spring practice updates
College Football rumors: Arch Manning slow-moving in Texas QB battle
You could make the argument that Steve Sarkisian is overseeing the most talented quarterback room in the country with the Texas Longhorns as Quinn Ewers, redshirt freshman Maalik Murphy and some guy named Arch Manning were all 5-star recruits. At this right, they might as well throw their hat into the Lamar Jackson ring too.
Going into the spring, though, Sarkisian made it clear that Ewers would have to earn the QB1 job despite being the starter a year ago, which does make sense given the talent in that position group. As such, most people assumed that the buzzworthy Manning legacy would be the primary challenger for the starting job as spring practice got underway.
Thus far, though, Arch Manning doesn’t appear to be challenging Ewers all that much.
During the first spring practice earlier this month, Manning worked with the second-team offense while Ewers worked with the ones. But the more shocking update came when Murphy got on the field about a week later and took over the second-team reps while Manning was with the third-team offense, as noted by Texas insider Anwar Richardson.
Texas QB Maalik Murphy was fully participating in the portion of practice. Media members were allowed to watch on Tuesday. He was receiving second-team reps while Arch Manning was receiving third-team reps.
— Anwar Richardson (@AnwarRichardson) March 21, 2023
On top of that, Ewers has been impressive. He was one of the standouts at the first scrimmage of the spring for the Longhorns, not only making a number of highlight-reel touchdown passes but also notably carrying his frame better than he did a year ago.
Whenever Sarkisian announced the Texas quarterback battle, this was always the ideal outcome — not that there was a bad one. With Ewers having the experience advantage, having Manning and Murphy push him to be better would only help the Longhorns in the long run. Thus far, that appears to be happening. But we’ll have to see if Arch Manning has anything more to say on the matter by virtue of his spring performance from here on out.
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