{"id":225827,"date":"2025-09-14T09:33:11","date_gmt":"2025-09-14T09:33:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/225827\/"},"modified":"2025-09-14T09:33:11","modified_gmt":"2025-09-14T09:33:11","slug":"arch-manning-wasnt-benched-amid-texas-footballs-struggles-vs-utep","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/225827\/","title":{"rendered":"Arch Manning wasn’t benched amid Texas football’s struggles vs UTEP"},"content":{"rendered":"

On Saturday, Sarkisian was asked whether he considered temporarily benching Manning amidst a poor performance against\u00a0UTEP<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It’s a tactic Sarkisian deployed last season when Ewers struggled in the face of\u00a0a swarming Georgia defense<\/a>. Against UTEP<\/a>, Manning completed 11 of his 25 passes for 114 yards with one touchdown and an interception.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“I think it was too early to say, ‘Oh, give him a series (on the bench),'” Sarkisian said after the game. “He provides enough offense for us where I can go a different way using his legs and provide offense that way. Obviously, he scored two touchdowns with his legs today to take advantage of it, and had a nice two-minute drive there right at the end of the first half to score.”<\/p>\n

Manning carried the ball nine times for 51 yards, finding the end zone twice to account for all three of the touchdowns for the Longhorns (2-1)\u00a0in a 27-10 victory over the Miners (1-2).\u00a0<\/p>\n

Sarkisian said he believes Manning is capable of playing better.\u00a0<\/p>\n

He did so last week against San Jose State<\/a>, when he threw for 295 yards with five total touchdowns. But bake in a middling performance at Ohio State and Manning has put forth a product through three weeks that hasn’t matched the sky-high expectations for him externally.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“I know there’s a lot of football in there that’s high-level, quality football,” Sarkisian said. “And so is my expectation of him as a player high? Yes. Do I expect him to play the best football of his career in the first three games of the season? Probably not. That probably wouldn’t be fair. But our job as coaches is to work him toward that.”\u00a0<\/p>\n

Manning’s efficiency metrics have declined substantially from his electrifying cameos last year, when he averaged 10.4 yards per pass attempt. This year, he’s all the way down at 6.8 yards per attempt.\u00a0<\/p>\n

And it might cost him some sleep.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“I’m just frustrated,” Manning said. “I know I’m better than this, so it’s a little frustrating. It’s going to be hard to sleep tonight, but I’ll be back rolling. It’s the only thing I can do.”\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On Saturday, Sarkisian was asked whether he considered temporarily benching Manning amidst a poor performance against\u00a0UTEP.\u00a0 It’s a…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":225828,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[23603,1428,51,50,71282,9662,20815,52,121960],"class_list":{"0":"post-225827","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"tag-arch-manning","9":"tag-college-football","10":"tag-headlines","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-steve-sarkisian","13":"tag-texas-longhorns","14":"tag-texas-longhorns-football","15":"tag-top-stories","16":"tag-utep-miners"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115201966334068205","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225827","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=225827"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225827\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/225828"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=225827"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=225827"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=225827"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}