David Pollack says that Steve Sarkisian deserves more blame for Arch Manning, Texas’ failures this season
By Jacob Moss
Published:
Arguably, the biggest story from the first half of the 2025 college football season has been the collapse of the Texas Longhorns through their first 5 games.
Led by pre-season Heisman favorite Arch Manning, the Longhorns entered the new campaign as the No. 1-ranked team in the country and the better favorite to hoist the College Football Playoff National Championship trophy come season’s end.
All of that has quickly gone by the wayside, however, as Texas has sputtered out to a 3-2 start, which includes an embarrassing upset loss to the Florida Gators in Week 6.
A ton of criticism for the Longhorns’ slow start has rightfully been laid at the feet of Manning, given his struggles, but David Pollack believes that head coach Steve Sarkisian is actually the one who deserves the lion’s share of the blame.
“Everybody is gonna crap on Arch and say that he’s not playing great, and he hasn’t,” Pollack said on a recent episode of his See Ball, Get Ball podcast. “But let’s not let the most important part to me off the hook. Sark’s 2-8 versus top-10 teams at Texas. 9-15 in one-score games… We’re going to talk about Arch; he’s not playing well, but whose job is it for him to play well? It’s the coach’s job.”
It’s hard to argue with Pollack’s criticism of Sark, given the product his team has put on display thus far. It may be the popular move to bash Arch, but sooner or later, the failures of any team have to be placed on the man in charge.
If Sark can’t manage to get things back on track, then he could find himself at the center of all this frustration sooner rather than later.
