{"id":64991,"date":"2024-09-24T18:00:18","date_gmt":"2024-09-24T22:00:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/?p=64991"},"modified":"2025-09-13T15:54:32","modified_gmt":"2025-09-13T19:54:32","slug":"sarkisian-updates-on-manning-and-ewers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/2024\/09\/24\/sarkisian-updates-on-manning-and-ewers\/","title":{"rendered":"Sarkisian Updates On Manning and Ewers"},"content":{"rendered":"

Coach Steve Sarkisian gave updates on his injured quarterback Quinn Ewers and an analysis of Arch Manning’s first start during his press conferences. <\/span>The top-ranked Texas Longhorns<\/a> will play their first SEC game this coming weekend against one and three Mississippi State. This comes after their blowout victory this past weekend over UL Monroe 51 to three.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Manning\u2019s First Start<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Top recruit Arch Manning<\/a> made his first career start in that game for the injured Quinn Ewers. Manning was 15 of 29 for 258 yards, two touchdowns, and two interceptions. Longhorn\u2019s coach Steve Sarkisian felt they had to be aggressive downfield given UL Monroe\u2019s style of play. After the game, he gave his initial critique of Manning\u2019s performance.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s a challenging thing, especially a guy making his first career start because you feel like you\u2019re just hitting them and you want to keep hitting those things. To be fair to him, maybe we should have found some other just kind of completions in there to keep his rhythm. I thought we kind of did that there at the end of the third quarter. You know, hit a slant. Hit a couple of the simpler type throws because I\u2019d like that completion percentage to be a little higher than it was tonight.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Sarkisian seemed pleased enough with the redshirt freshman\u2019s performance. Manning did throw an interception on his first drive. But his coach was most impressed by the growth he\u2019s seen in Manning over the last year.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think the Arch we saw today in dealing with some of those negative plays was the same guy we saw a year ago at this time. He has grown a ton and that takes a lot of maturity to get that done. I think he\u2019s got a really good guy to watch in Quinn because Quinn has evolved that way as well.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Sarkisian doubled down on that analysis during his Monday press conference. He emphasized that Manning might want to take more check downs rather than risking deeper throws down the field.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s probably four or five plays in there when he really grasps checking that ball down, the value in that check down, and maybe not having to force a couple of those throws. The impact that could have had, that\u2019s the difference of completing 52 percent of your passes to 65 percent of your passes and then what that all looks like, so room for growth there.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Ewers\u2019 Injury Update<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Sarkisian also gave an update on injured starting quarterback Quinn Ewers<\/a>. Ewers missed last week\u2019s game with an abdominal strain. The Texas coach broke down what he needed to see in order to consider starting his quarterback.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s got to do enough to show me he can play,\u201d Sarkisian said. \u201cWe\u2019ve got a game plan. Can he execute the game plan?\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Sarkisian emphasized that he will need to see how Ewers improves each day before deciding on his status.\u00a0 But his coach did say the junior quarterback participated in practice on Monday.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cToday was a good start. I was actually impressed with where he was today.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Sarkisian seems unlikely to take any risks with Ewers for a team with National Championship aspirations.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI want to make sure he\u2019s healthy enough to play at a high level.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

This is big news for the Longhorns even if Ewers isn\u2019t ready to play this weekend. Mississippi State got smoked by the struggling Florida Gators last weekend. Even Manning coming off his sub-par performance should have no issues beating the Bulldogs. Texas has a bye the following week, so Sarkisian can wait until he\u2019s sure Ewers is closer to 100 percent. That would give Ewers almost three more weeks to heal before they face off against 21st-ranked Oklahoma and 2nd-ranked Georgia back-to-back weeks starting October 12th.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"
Photo Credit: Sara Diggins\/American-Statesman \/ USA TODAY NETWORK<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Coach Steve Sarkisian gave updates on his injured quarterback Quinn Ewers and an analysis of Arch Manning’s first start during his press conferences. The top-ranked Texas Longhorns will play their first SEC game this coming weekend against one and three Mississippi State. This comes after their blowout victory this past weekend over UL Monroe 51 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5300,"featured_media":64999,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"no","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3,10906,2,35576],"tags":[9728,79,7180,20,5095,204,3402],"class_list":["post-64991","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sec","category-cfb","category-featured","category-texas-longhorns","tag-arch-manning","tag-college-football","tag-quinn-ewers","tag-sec","tag-steve-sarkisian","tag-texas-longhorns","tag-top-25"],"modified_by":"Michael Kovacs, ADMIN","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64991","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5300"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=64991"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64991\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":79447,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64991\/revisions\/79447"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/64999"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=64991"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=64991"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=64991"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}