The 2025 season for Texas A&M versus that of the Longhorns showed two programs trending in quite different directions. Despite starting the season as the no. 1 team in the nation, Steve Sarkisian’s program became the quickest to drop from the top ranking to completely out of the 25-team AP Poll in history, while the Aggies won 11 games and hosted a playoff game against the eventual national runners-up.
While it can be grating to endure the eye-rolling levels of unearned hype for the Longhorns every season, the eerie similarities between this year and the previous should not be missed. Texas fans were positively squealing with delight when reporting emerged last year that Arch Manning may be returning in 2026, and now, we have the exact same news cycle going on again:
NEW: Steve Sarkisian is not ruling out the possibility of Arch Manning returning to Texas in 2027:
— On3 (@On3) June 15, 2026
"You know, we haven’t had the discussion, but I will tell you, I would not be surprised. I think Arch really loves college football, I really do. I think he loves the University… pic.twitter.com/ymXugWDxkH
Of course, as I remarked at the time, Manning’s potential return would not be a situation where he was the clear-cut first overall pick but just decided he loved the Longhorns enough to come back to Austin; rather, it would be due to a severe disappointment relative to expectations once actual games started being put on tape. And guess what happened?
Sarkisian’s comments about Arch Manning’s return show A&M fans once again that he is not progressing
The fact that Sarkisian is putting this out there right now should show Texas A&M fans exactly one thing: Despite all of the bold prognostications among draft experts all-too-enamored with a disturbingly short set of highlights and a last name, this is the exact kind of thing Aggie fans would expect to see if the leap that Texas fans have been hoping for has not happened.
It’s become very easy for Longhorn fans to memory-hole what happened with Manning this past season, but that will all come crashing down once the ball is actually snapped. The game he played against UTEP was one of the worst I’ve ever seen out of a quarterback for a major program— the man couldn’t even complete a screen pass— and his work as a passer against the Aggies in their penultimate game was much worse than many remember.
It’s two games that are currently buoying Texas fans’ hopes about Arch (three if you count a hazy recollection of the Lone Star Showdown that falls apart under any scrutiny at all) are against Arkansas (maybe the worst pass defense in FBS) and a Michigan team that was coming apart at the seams following everything that happened with their head coach. When any pressure was applied to Arch, he invariably crumbled, and there’s nothing to suggest that won’t be the case in 2026– if anything, this comment should confirm that idea.
This isn’t to say that there are not clear physical gifts on display with Manning, or that he won’t be drafted highly in the final analysis; however, much like Anthony Richardson, it seems like it will all be based on projection rather than actual achievement. There’s already a lot of hype for the late-season matchup between the Aggies and the Longhorns, and a lot of Texas confidence based on the fact that they think Manning will be playing at a national championship level.
It is more likely at this point that he will be the second-straight top-ranked quarterback to come to Texas and fail to live up to the hype. Make no mistake: he’ll be discussed plenty this season, but it may not be for the reasons Texas fans would like.
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