If there is one thing that skipped a generation of Manning quarterbacks, it is natural running ability.
Archie Manning, in his football prime half a century ago, was quite the dual-threat quarterback. His sons Peyton and Eli, on the other hand, were much better known for composure as pocket passers in their day. Senior quarterback Arch Manning, a third-generation signal-caller, got the gift of mobility from his grandfather, already surpassing his uncles in terms of running ability.
The question for Texas continues to be: how do Arch’s legs need to be managed?
Head coach Steve Sarkisian mentioned on Monday that Texas will implement more strategic, designed runs for Manning to take advantage of his mobility. As we’ve seen at both the collegiate and professional level, employing your big quarterback’s legs at “opportune times,” as Sarkisian put it, is a huge asset to have in your back pocket.
But when Manning does run, the physicality cannot equal the damage he took from UTSA. The first person to tell him that may be his grandfather.
“Get down or get out of bounds,” Manning said last year about Archie’s advice at the end of each of their phone calls, according to Inside Texas.
With just over four minutes remaining in the second quarter last week, Manning scrambled on a second-and-one situation. He found his crease out of the pocket, passed the first-down markers, and then — boom — got caught in the middle of three Roadrunner defenders and was laid out, his helmet flying off in the process.
The questions surrounding how to utilize Manning’s mobility did not come all at that instant. It has undoubtedly been something that Sarkisian and his staff have been weighing for some time, considering the risk of putting your quarterback’s body on the line without protection.
After the game on Saturday, Manning claimed the helmet-removing hit had no effect on him physically.
Yet, the face of the program being lit up in that fashion — with the Longhorns up two touchdowns against a visibly less-talented team — was not a pleasant sight for Sarkisian, nor the 100,000 Texas fans packed into Darrell K Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium.
Yes, the solution, probably blurted out by thousands in the stands, is to “get down!” Sarkisian admitted that the staff needs to “keep coaching that aspect of his game.”
Still, there is more to it than that. Sarkisian said he “felt like Arch kind of fell in love with his legs” against UTSA, a tendency he believed impacted the rest of Manning’s performance.
“His legs are a really good weapon,” Sarkisian said. “But what happens when you go to run, you can start speeding up through your progressions. And I think that we don’t want to make a living with him running the ball as much as he ran tonight. We want him to use his legs when he can, but ideally we’re in rhythm in the passing game when the ball’s coming out, we’re calling things where he can get completions and he’s throwing it accurately.”
Manning completed just 50% of his passes on Saturday, and while that might not be solely because of the attempts to evade with his legs or the hits taken, the showing was Manning’s fourth-worst completion percentage in the 18 games he’s started at Texas. He also had his fewest passing yards in a game since the struggle at Kentucky last October.
The Longhorns have too many offensive weapons and too creative of a play-caller to rely on Manning’s legs consistently. He has shown what he can do with his arm when confident in the pocket.
The focus must be on sustaining that season-defining confidence because it is what will win football games, especially away from home.
Opportunities to capitalize on his mobility will follow suit.
