Arch Manning had a rough time in his first career start as the formerly top-ranked Texas Longhorns fell to the Ohio State Buckeyes in Columbus on the opening weekend of the 2025 college football season.
A loss on the road to the defending national champions isn’t anything to be ashamed of. But as the preseason Heisman favorite with more hype for his first start than arguably any other quarterback in recent memory, the newest Manning on the block failed to impress.
Manning posted pedestrian numbers that were only slightly redeemed by racking up yards and completions late in the fourth quarter. He was 17/30 for 170 yards with 1 TD and 1 INT.
However, those numbers only tell part of the story. Texas was shut out until the 3:28 mark of the fourth quarter before losing 14-7. Manning struggled to make anything happen throughout the entire game. In fact, the performance left almost everybody in the college football universe wondering if we had all gotten it wrong by boarding the Arch Manning hype train so early and so convincingly.
And that includes ESPN College GameDay analyst Desmond Howard.
In an appearance on The Rich Eisen Show, Howard took a small victory lap by claiming that he was never convinced that Manning would excel right away, and the hype was overblown. However, he also took it a step further. The former Michigan Wolverine then claimed that the reason Manning was overhyped and why some chose not to criticize him after the Ohio State loss was to maintain their relationships with the wider Manning family.
“This is the beautiful part about all of this. People don’t want to really criticize him as harshly because he is a Manning and they want to stay in good favor with the Mannings, right? This is a big name in our sport,” Howard said.
“So what they do is they make it seem like Matt Patricia, the defensive coordinator for Ohio State, just called this brilliant game that kept Steve Sarkisian and Arch Manning off balance for four whole quarters.”
Howard even called out people on his own network for the narrative that was built, choosing to hype up Patricia and the Buckeyes’ defense instead of being willing to criticize Arch Manning too severely. While he didn’t name names, he turned his focus to certain analysts on SportsCenter who refused to state the obvious about Manning’s play.
“Now Matt Patricia did call a very good game. There’s no doubt about that. But, I saw guys on SportsCenter and other shows pulling like three tape plays and showing how he may have confused Arch Manning with a look or secondary switch at the last minute,” Howard added.
“And I’m watching the film and I can show you ten to twelve plays where guys were running wide open and he either just didn’t hit them with the ball or he didn’t see these guys. It wasn’t that complex or that complicated. He struggled the way I thought he would struggle because even though he’s been in the system for three years, you look at him and he’s never really played in these meaningful games so the hype was blown way out of proportion for Arch Manning.”
Thankfully, there are uploads of every throw from Saturday’s game in the younger Manning’s first start. And it’s pretty easy to see that there are several throws that were well off the mark.
Every Arch Manning passing attempt vs Ohio State 🎯
What grade would you give his performance in week 1? pic.twitter.com/4yGpm15uoT
— FOX College Football (@CFBONFOX) August 31, 2025
The tape doesn’t lie. There are high throws, low throws, throws off the back foot, sidearm throws, and throws where open receivers are just missed.
But it’s probably fair to say that both takeaways from the Ohio State-Texas game can be true. Manning did struggle in his debut, but Matt Patricia and Ohio State should also be given their flowers for a terrific defensive performance. Ultimately, there is a lot of football to be played in the 2025 season to reveal which narrative will have more staying power… and just how much influence the Manning family might have over the college football media discourse.
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