Steve Sarkisian discusses how Arch Manning is blocking out the noise in 2026
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Steve Sarkisian doesn’t want Arch Manning to become a victim of the noise that surrounds him, and the Texas head coach is confident that won’t happen this fall as the Longhorns quarterback takes aim at college football greatness.
Last season was an up-and-down struggle for Manning amid that same noise, and Texas ultimately fell short of the College Football Playoff in Manning’s first year as the starting quarterback in Austin.
On Thursday, with fall camp and the 2026 season right on the horizon, Sarkisian went on The Rich Eisen Show and talked about how his potential star quarterback with the famous last name is handling all that noise.
“I’m so proud of him. Any time you have that name on the back of your jersey, that carries so much weight … they’re the first family of football. You think about who they are as a family and all they’ve done, and there’s this kid. Now, he’s got this name on the front of his jersey, too. He’s carrying the weight of that,” Steve Sarkisian said.
The head coach discussed how Manning plowed through that adversity last season and how he’s better for it going into this year.
“The expectations were just outlandish. So many people built him up to be the greatest of all time, the first pick of the draft, the Heisman Trophy winner,” Sarkisian said. “That when we weren’t very good at the start of the year and he wasn’t at his best at the start of the year, it was almost like the same people that built him up wanted to tear him down because he let them down.”
It was almost like those pundits took it all personally, Sarkisian said on Thursday.
“Because they all went on air and said all these things about him, it was almost like he didn’t live up to what they said he was supposed to be,” Sarkisian said. “In reality, for himself, he learned a lot about himself. It was probably the first real adversity he’s faced in his life, and he found out about himself and he got on the other side of it.”
Here are Sarkisian’s entire comments on Manning:
With Manning in his second year at the helm in Austin, expectations will be sky high for Texas to compete for an SEC title. Here is what the Kalshi market is currently saying about the Longhorns’ chances to climb the mountain and capture that SEC crown in December:
Cory Nightingale, a former sportswriter and sports editor at the Miami Herald and Palm Beach Post, is a South Florida-based freelance writer who covers Alabama for SaturdayDownSouth.com.
