When now-redshirt sophomore Texas Longhorns quarterback Arch Manning arrived on the Forty Acres in early 2023 as the nation’s No. 1 prospect, he was used to playing, having started all four years at New Orleans (La.) Isidore Newman.
“I don’t know if that’s a flex because we were 2A,” Manning joked at SEC Media Days in Atlanta this week. “Freshman year was tough — I didn’t deserve to play, but I wasn’t used to not playing.”
So Manning needed a sounding board to deal with those frustrations. He’d started to develop a habit of acting like he was talking on the phone to his mom while walking across campus to in an effort to deflect some attention, but it was special assistant to the head coach Paul Chryst that Manning turned to in order to aid his adjustment period to being a backup.