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From The Athletic:

Cooper Manning is bracing for impact. He is locked in a three-point stance and ready for a blitz of rapid takes about his son, the quarterback for a football-mad school in a football-mad state.

“I’m fully prepared for a little bit of everything,” Manning said.

And for good reason. As the shaggy-haired face of the Texas Longhorns, his son Arch – you might’ve heard of him — is approaching his debut as a full-time college starter that stands among the most forbidding opening acts in the history of the sport.

Ohio State. Defending champs. On the road.

“There’s nowhere to hide,” Cooper said.

It’s must-see TV because the Mannings are the Kennedys of American football, the closest thing the game has to a royal family. That’s why Cooper is getting himself ready for a rush of emotions that will be awfully hard to control.

His father Archie was a No. 2 overall draft pick and two-time Pro Bowler, and his brothers, Peyton and Eli, were both No. 1 overall draft picks and two-time Super Bowl champs. Everyone has expected at least the same level of greatness from Cooper’s son since the day he accomplished something at Isidore Newman School in New Orleans that Peyton and Eli did not.

Arch became the varsity starter as a freshman.

Six years later, the most hyped, publicized, talked-about, tweeted-about high school athlete of the social media age (LeBron James was in the NBA before the advent of the major platforms) will finally jog through a tunnel with a college team to call his own. The Longhorns, ranked the preseason No. 1 team in America because Arch Manning is their quarterback, will meet the No. 3 Buckeyes on Saturday in Columbus, Ohio.

“And I know there’s no way Arch is going to live up to the hype and expectations,” Cooper told The Athletic recently. “I’ve known that’s coming.”

Cooper was merely saying it would be impossible for any quarterback who has made only two starts — in relief of the injured Quinn Ewers last season — to honor the forecasts that have him as the slam-dunk No. 1 overall pick in whichever NFL Draft he enters, and as a future Sunday superstar whose athletic ability should elevate him above his uncles. And Arch’s father was merely expressing frustration with the media machine that needs inflamed reactions ASAP to keep the whole thing rolling.

But this question had to be asked: What if Arch Manning does live up to the hype and expectations?

Cooper paused when he heard that one over the phone.

“There will be ups and downs, good plays and great plays and bad plays,” he’d say, “but everybody wants to make a judgment call on a very small body of work. You see a quarterback in one preseason game and they want to crown him or kill him, and it’s a little much. But I’m excited about the whole season and looking forward to seeing the mistakes Arch makes in Week 1 that he doesn’t make in Week 2.”

Anyone who cares about college football should be excited about this whole season. We never got to see LeBron play a year at Duke. We will get to see Arch play one or two years at Texas, and there is every reason to believe he will validate all the wonderful things said about him. And then some.

He has Cooper’s perspective, Archie’s feet, Peyton’s arm and Eli’s composure. One fellow member of the New York Giants who helped Eli win those two Super Bowls, Lawrence Tynes, said his teammate was “the most consistent human being I’ve ever played with. If you can build a player to handle playing quarterback in New York, you would build an Eli.”

And if you could build a player to navigate the chaos of high-stakes major college football, you would build an Arch.

He has the bloodlines and the institutional knowledge to ultimately match where Tennessee’s Peyton and Ole Miss’ Archie and Eli landed in the Heisman Trophy voting — in the top three. Beyond that, he is a modern-day Manning in every sense, equipped with the footspeed that Peyton and Eli would’ve cut a Faustian deal for.

Cooper was the fastest of the Manning boys and a gifted wide receiver until spinal stenosis ended his career in college, and his wife, Ellen, was a high school track star. They passed down their wheels to Arch, who was clocked by Reel Analytics at a top speed of 20.7 mph on a 67-yard touchdown run last year against the University of Texas-San Antonio.

Arch’s high school coach at Isidore Newman, Nelson Stewart, said he hand-clocked the quarterback in the low 4.5 range in the 40-yard dash, better than his reported time of 4.6 and the 4.59 once posted at the draft combine by reigning Super Bowl MVP Jalen Hurts.

Though Peyton and Eli were 6-5 craftsmen who worked around the limitations of their dad bods, their nephew is a ripped and rangy 6-4 wideout disguised as a quarterback, a baller with the explosiveness required to create separation from the defense.

“Arch is a pretty unbelievable athlete,” said Stewart, now the head coach at the Westminster Schools in Atlanta. “Arch can dunk and he was our longest broad jumper and he makes insane off-platform throws. (Ole Miss coach) Lane Kiffin saw him and said he’s like Josh Allen in the way you can run quarterback sweeps with him. He can do anything. He’s even great at mimicking the dropbacks of a bunch of quarterbacks in the NFL, including Peyton’s.”

Arch was hardly the only kid to imitate the first-ballot Hall of Famer. Peyton was a legend from way back, the kind of high school recruit who made the grownups at Division I schools do silly, silly things. Herschel Walker was that kind of recruit, along with the likes of Marcus Dupree, Todd Marinovich, Tim Tebow and Trevor Lawrence.

“But I’d argue that the most intense recruitment in the history of college football was Arch Manning’s,” Stewart told The Athletic. “His recruitment was crazier than anyone ever knew. It was a tornado. It was my life for four years and every day from 6 a.m. to whenever I pulled up. Constant calls and an all-out blitz on the Newman campus of people trying anything they could to get in front of this kid.

“I had recruiters waiting in my office at all hours. Everyone was like, ‘Can I just shake his hand?’ I just took that barrage and it was the most stressful time of my life. I had a Power 5 coach going 50 mph on St. Charles Avenue to get in front of a bus to say hi to Arch. It was unlike anything you’ve ever seen, where everyone wants to be his best friend. (Texas assistant) AJ Milwee called me more than my wife did the last two years.”

One Alabama assistant, Pete Golding, who described Texas head coach Steve Sarkisian as his best friend, even brought up Sark’s past struggles with alcoholism in a conference call with Arch (with friends like that …), according to bestselling author Seth Wickersham in his book American Kings. Golding was naturally feeling the heat from an overlord known as “Daddy,” Nick Saban.

“Every school in the country was willing to give Arch anything and to do anything to get him there, and I don’t think it ever mattered to him,” Stewart said. “He never got caught up in it. He just wanted to go to a school that he loved with an innovative coach like Sark who allowed him to flourish.”

Arch didn’t make a panic move for the transfer portal during his two seasons as an understudy. He watched and learned and got bigger and better. Sarkisian prepared him like a starter, and along the way, Arch’s father showed him a few things about the game too. Despite the pocket pedigree of Archie, Peyton and Eli, “Coop taught Arch how to play football,” the quarterback’s mother told The Athletic’s Bruce Feldman.

So no, that won’t be Peyton’s or Eli’s boy out there Saturday in Columbus. Cooper will find his seat among fellow Texas parents in The Horseshoe and then he might even remind himself to avoid repeating his father’s mistakes during Peyton’s NFL debut with the Indianapolis Colts in 1998. The camera caught Archie looking disgusted and hanging his head after a couple of Peyton’s interceptions against Miami, and that night, the son told his old man to never, ever do that again. And Archie never did.

“I’m not quite sure how I’ll be, but I’ll try to be calm and cool and really enjoy this,” Cooper said. “It’s a fun time for our family to see Arch living out his dream. He’s come a long way and I’ll enjoy it the best I can and not grind out every third-down incompletion. That’s what I’ll try to do … but I may be totally full of it.”

Nothing is guaranteed with these opening days, on any level. Uncle Eli lost his first NFL start to Michael Vick and the Falcons before Vick assured him afterward that he would be “just like your brother in due time.” Eli lost his next five Giants starts. His father was so afraid to watch one of them, against Ray Lewis and the Ravens, that he went to bed before kickoff and told his wife, Olivia, to wake him only if something good happened.

Archie slept through the entire nightmare. Eli was 4-for-18 for 27 yards with two interceptions and a 0.00 passer rating.

Eli’s nephew will surely do better than that against Ohio State. And if not, he will surely recover in time to be an imposing force in the SEC. “The target’s not on our back,” Arch said, “but we’ve got a red dot on everyone else.” He’s humble, but he’s not shy about where he plans to lead this team.

By all accounts, Arch has been a relatively ego-free prodigy who hasn’t gotten lost in the hysteria around his presence. He has tuned out major-college madness just like Eli once tuned out New York.

“I feel like I’m a pretty normal guy, like to hang out with my buddies, play golf,” Arch said at SEC media days. “I take football pretty seriously, but other than that, just a regular guy.”

Just an Average Joe being pumped up for his way-above-average football genes.

Merriam-Webster defines “hype” as “promotional publicity of an extravagant or contrived kind.” You can see why any parent or kid would want to scramble away from that.

Though Arch Manning never asked for this buildup, it’s a safe bet one of two things is going to happen here.

1) He’s going to live up to the hype.

2) He’s going to exceed it.

  • Hook 'Em 8
Posted
6 hours ago, Blake Munroe said:

I’m excited about the whole season and looking forward to seeing the mistakes Arch makes in Week 1 that he doesn’t make in Week 2.”—Cooper Manning

Now I know where Arch gets his media savvy comebacks during his media availability.  

I have full confidence that Arch has the tools to make this CFB season really special.

Hook’em 

  • Hook 'Em 3
Posted
14 minutes ago, NothinButDaHorns34 said:

I could be wrong but neither am i. I don’t think either QB will look spectacular. 

Yeah, any expectations of superstardom for Julian Sayin against Texas is pie in the sky stuff. I just hope he doesn't have multiple strip sacks by holding onto the ball too long. 

Posted
12 minutes ago, LovingBuckeye said:

Yeah, any expectations of superstardom for Julian Sayin against Texas is pie in the sky stuff. I just hope he doesn't have multiple strip sacks by holding onto the ball too long. 

Tbh that is precisely what I think will be a key in this game. I fully expect Texas to get consistent pressure on Sayin, and Simmons and Hill like to go for the strip sack. I could see an INT and 1-2 sack fumbles by Sayin, which will make the difference. But I guess we will find out in less than 48 hours!

  • Hook 'Em 2
Posted
16 minutes ago, Bunk Moreland said:

Tbh that is precisely what I think will be a key in this game. I fully expect Texas to get consistent pressure on Sayin, and Simmons and Hill like to go for the strip sack. I could see an INT and 1-2 sack fumbles by Sayin, which will make the difference. But I guess we will find out in less than 48 hours!

I can't wait brother. Props to both programs for scheduling this game, and not cancelling it once UT joined the SEC, and the B1G added the west coast teams.

  • Thanks 2
Posted
39 minutes ago, LovingBuckeye said:

Yeah, any expectations of superstardom for Julian Sayin against Texas is pie in the sky stuff. I just hope he doesn't have multiple strip sacks by holding onto the ball too long. 

Run game, defensive struggle, field position and avoiding costly turnovers is how i see this going. If either of the QB’s has some type of 300 yard with two touchdowns type of game well that teams got a star in the making. 

Posted

Arch  will come out Guns out, Guns loaded … last one Standing  …. He is True Texas Gunslinger…..

The red Dot is on Downs… every cb n Lb…. If aint laser dotin that overated Buckeye secondary…. He will be plowin them over… juke here n there 

this will be a Buckeye beatdown of this generation…. Ryan Day might very well be Gone !

Sarks goin for it…. Sorry osu your days of livin off Texas talent are Done! 
 

Arch is Texas version of Josey Wales n Blondie in Good Bad Ugly!  

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