Danny Kanell watched Arch Manning miss crossing routes against Ohio State, San Jose State, and now UTEP, and saw something familiar. The hesitation before throws. The overthinking of routine plays. The way confidence seemed to leak out with each incompletion.
It reminded him of two other highly touted prospects who had everything until they suddenly didn’t.
“There’s almost like a Markelle Fultz, Ben Simmons something going on,” Kanell said on his Cover 3 Podcast. “Where those guys were all everything, they were supposed to be incredible, and then something happened. And it’s mostly mental.”
Arch Manning’s struggles and mechanical issues have led to some concerning comps from @dannykanell pic.twitter.com/vywj5tnz47
— Cover 3 Podcast (@Cover3Podcast) September 15, 2025
The comparison sounds ridiculous until you look at what actually happened.
Fultz looked fine in college, then crumbled under NBA expectations. Simmons dominated for three years before playoff pressure broke his aggression. Manning looked comfortable in limited action last year, then wilted when handed the starting job, combined with the Heisman hype.
Manning completed 17 of 30 passes for 170 yards against Ohio State. For three quarters, he had 38 passing yards. ESPN tracked his off-target percentage at 37%, which is the worst by a Texas quarterback in the past decade.
The numbers improved in Week 2 against San Jose State. Manning went 19 of 30 for 295 yards and four touchdowns. But he still threw an interception in the red zone and started the game 3-of-6 for 11 yards before finally finding a rhythm. Against UTEP this past weekend, he went 11 of 25 for 295 yards while getting booed by his own fans after completing only 31% of his passes in the first half.
“We’ve seen Arch make all the throws,” Kanell said. “And even there were times in that game where he had a couple of nice throws, but there is way too many stretches where [Steve Sarkisian] is trying to get his confidence up by calling easy routes — quick hitches, crossing routes — and he was missing them.”
That’s the catch-22 all three players faced. You need confidence to perform, but you need to perform to build confidence. Fultz never solved it in Philadelphia. Simmons hasn’t solved it anywhere. Manning has the rest of the season to figure it out.
The difference is that Manning has what the others didn’t, a coaching staff that can afford patience and a program that doesn’t need him to be perfect immediately. Texas can win games while he finds himself again.
Whether he actually will is the question. Because right now, watching Arch Manning play quarterback looks exactly like watching Markelle Fultz shoot free throws. And that’s not a comparison anyone wants to be accurate.
About Sam Neumann
Since the beginning of 2023, Sam has been a staff writer for Awful Announcing and The Comeback. A 2021 graduate of Temple University, Sam is a Charlotte native, who currently calls Greenville, South Carolina his home. He also has a love/hate relationship with the New York Mets and Jets.