Three games into his first season as a starter, it’s safe to say that preseason Heisman Trophy favorite and projected No. 1 overall pick in the 2026 Arch Manning has not lived up to the enormous hype. During Saturday morning’s edition of College GameDay from Coral Gables, the crew did their best to diagnose just what has gone wrong with perhaps the most recognizable player in college football.
The nephew of NFL legends Peyton and Eli Manning, Manning entered his first season as a starter with soaring expectations fueled by his famous last name, his five-star recruiting rating coming out of high school, and his strong performances last season when he filled in for the previous Texas Longhorns starter, Quinn Ewers. Through three games, however, Manning has been massively disappointing.
The Longhorns are 2-1 with the only loss coming on the road to the top-ranked Ohio State Buckeyes, but Manning has struggled mightily through the air, completing just 55.3 percent of his passes for 579 yards with three interceptions in three games. Manning’s most recent performance was his most concerning yet, as he completed just 11 of 25 passing attempts, including 10 consecutive incompletions, for just 114 yards with one touchdown and an interception.
Manning’s struggles have been so apparent and concerning that he has lost some of his strongest supporters, while others have begun to speculate that he must be playing injured.
As the young quarterback looks to rebound from his recent struggles with a game against Sam Houston State, the College GameDay crew assessed the situation.
The College GameDay crew discusses the Arch Manning struggles. 🏈🎙️ #CFB pic.twitter.com/YzLALc4K3D https://t.co/5wvjpusRpR
— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) September 20, 2025
Nick Saban
Seven-time national champion head coach Nick Saban coached his fair share of quarterbacks throughout his legendary coaching career, and he seems to think that Manning simply needs more practice reps to help nail down his technique.
“You know, I think when things aren’t going well for a player, you’ve got to go back to the technical aspects of how you’re trying to execute. Like, his mechanics are a little off; he’s a little more side-armed than he was a year ago. You know, his footwork is not always exactly right in terms of his accuracy. I think it affects your confidence a little bit. I think he’s relying a little bit too much on running now rather than reading things out. And what I would say to any player on our team, alright, that was struggling.”
Saban believes that creating good habits will help Manning get his confidence back.
“You don’t practice to get it right; you practice until you can’t get it wrong,” Saban added. “And that’s what you’ve got to do, so you create the right habits so that you can play with great mechanics and good fundamentals.”
Pat McAfee
While Saban offered some practical advice, Pat McAfee took some of the blame himself, admitting that he probably had too high of expectations for the young quarterback.
“I feel like I was part of the problem,” McAfee said. “You know, I was crowning Arch before he even took a snap this year as the starter and before even seeing what this team was and how it was going to go for Arch Manning. So, I think that is 100% on an expectation that was set on him that was absolutely absurd.”
That said, McAfee hasn’t lost faith in him.
“And obviously, right now, all eyes are on him, and hopefully, he’ll be able to get out of it. I think he’ll develop into that,” McAfee added.
Kirk Herbstreit
A former quarterback himself, Kirk Herbstreit explained how he believes the high expectations have impacted Manning and his confidence. The former Ohio State quarterback thinks Manning’s struggles are as much mental and emotional as they are physical.
“This is a guy that started last year against Louisiana Monroe, Mississippi State, looks fine. Everything looks great. This kid’s been throwing the football his whole life. And all of a sudden, he can’t complete a pass in cases where the guys are wide open. It’s mechanics, but I think it’s emotional. It’s mental,” Herbstreit said.”It’s what you’re talking about. Unrealistic expectations – ‘he’s better than Peyton. He’s better than Eli, he’s the first pick next year in a draft,’ and now this guy’s got to go out and try to live up to that.”
“I think it just shows you the power of the mind and how they impact his mechanics,” Herbstreit continued. “Because this guy knows how to throw the ball, but he’s being impacted, I think, because all this weight, I think, is taking a toll.”
Desmond Howard
While most of the GameDay cast seemed to express some optimism about Manning’s struggles, Desmond Howard had a different tune. Howard didn’t seem to think there was much excuse for how Manning has performed so far this season.
“With all the resources available to these players nowadays, I mean, they have quarterback coaches, they have mental coaches. He’s at Texas – Texas, they have all the resources available that any college football player can ask for. So you wonder, why is he still struggling?” Howard said. “If it’s a mental thing, you would think that their coaching staff would have recognized this and they would have addressed it. If it’s the footwork, which all of us see on film, you would think that the coaching staff would have recognized this and addressed this.”
Howard had a more blunt opinion on Manning’s struggles as he suggested that Manning might be just a good quarterback rather than the generational quarterback that everyone expected him to be.
“I just think he’s just a good quarterback,” Howard said. “If his name was Charlie Brown, we would make fun of him, but we wouldn’t have these lofty expectations of him playing the quarterback position. I think he is who he is. What we see is who he is, and we just have to let him be, you know?”
Howard went on to suggest that Texas should have known what to expect from Manning and speculated that it could be a long season for the Longhorns if this truly is who he is as a quarterback.
“That’s going to be a long season, though, for the Longhorns, because I think they had greater expectations. I’m not sure why, because he’s been in the system long enough that they know what they got in him,” Manning said. “It’s going to be a long season. They got this game this week, and they have a bye, and then they jump into the SEC schedule, it may get ugly.”
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