‘There’s nothing to show me’ – Tom Brady leaves no doubt how he feels about Texas QB Arch Manning after Longhorns’ loss to Ohio State
Texas Longhorns quarterback Arch Manning looked mortal against the Ohio State Buckeyes on Saturday in Columbus. Manning, a former five-star recruit, passed for 170 yards, a touchdown, and an interception in the Longhorns’ 14-7 loss to the Buckeyes. The New Orleans native also rushed for 38 yards. There were moments where Manning, who is in […]
Texas Longhorns quarterback Arch Manning looked mortal against the Ohio State Buckeyes on Saturday in Columbus.
Manning, a former five-star recruit, passed for 170 yards, a touchdown, and an interception in the Longhorns’ 14-7 loss to the Buckeyes. The New Orleans native also rushed for 38 yards.
There were moments where Manning, who is in his first season as the starter at Texas after backing up Quinn Ewers for the past two seasons, looked like a future superstar. And there were moments where he looked like he still had a lot of developing to do.
Seven-time Super Bowl champion and soon-to-be Hall of Famer Tom Brady joined Cris Collinsworth on the Pro Football Focus YouTube channel over the weekend.
Brady shared some thoughts on Manning’s performance against Ohio State during the appearance with Collinsworth.
“Certainly the first play of the game, he’s rolling out to the right, and he has his receivers, he missed a tight end wide open, and kind of skips it to him,” said Brady. “A lot of these guys, they’re so young. And with social media and Twitter and Instagram, you can make someone look so great, and you can tear them down so quick.
“Before, it used to be that you had to wait until the paper comes out the next day to make a real evaluation. But in the digital era, it happens in five seconds. So I think there’s a blessing and a curse in some of it. The curse is a lot of people pile on. The blessing is [that] there needs to be resilience built up in the quarterback as well. So even though he didn’t have his best game today, and they lost, if he uses this to his advantage, Arch, he’s going to be tougher for it. And he’s going to have a better next game because of it.
“I always felt like you’ve got to deal with a lot of adversity from a quarterback standpoint — to toughen you up to be the true leader for the organization,” continued Brady. “And unfortunately, these kids now at 19 years old or 20, they’re forced to be the leaders of a college organization. And it was probably more the head coach [before], but because now there’s so many people moving every year in college, it’s really thrust upon that quarterback position to do that. And they’re young in their development. And there’s a long season to play out. Arch has years beyond this to still play in college, if he wants. But it’s going to be up to him to see how he really wants to dig within himself, and how deep he wants to dig, in order to be successful. But there’s nothing to show me that he won’t be that. He’s been that way in high school and even last year. And he’s got a lot of good people around him that know exactly what to do.”
There’s been an unreal amount of hot takes about Manning flying around after his uneven start against Ohio State. But as Brady noted, Manning is still young in his development — he’s nowhere close to a finished product. Tough games happen. It’s part of sports. Every player who’s ever stepped onto the field — including every player in the Hall of Fame — has had games they’d like to have back.
Manning has a lot of football ahead of him in his career. His start against Ohio State, ultimately, will just be a footnote years down the road.