COLUMBUS, Ohio — In every Western, the main character always gets knocked down before he can save the day like a conquering hero.
With 2:26 left on the clock, top-ranked Texas trailed reigning national champion Ohio State by a touchdown and that narrative was building for quarterback Arch Manning. After he looked nothing like the third-generation scion who was practically born to play quarterback, this was the moment when a Manning was supposed to look like, well, a .
Seventy-five yards were there for the taking. A hostile crowd of 107,524 fans at the Horseshoe roared. A redemption for Manning and the Longhorns in a College Football Playoff semifinal rematch was brewing.
Manning simply didn’t deliver in the most anticipated start any quarterback has made in the sport in at least a decade. Not on that final drive and definitely not over the course of a game which underwhelmed in the final score, 14–7 in favor of the No. 3 Buckeyes, and overall playmaking.
“Ultimately, not good enough,” Manning said. “Obviously you don’t want to start the season off 0–1. They’re a good team, but I thought we beat ourselves alive and that starts with me. I’ve got to play better for us to win.”
No one will disagree with that assessment.
Manning’s final stat line was pedestrian in the most generous description: 17 of 30, 170 yards with a touchdown and an interception. His 38 yards on the ground were an accessory instead of a complement for a quarterback whose legs were supposed to be a selling point.
Passes sailed wide as often as they sailed high into trouble or bounced along the Ohio Stadium turf. The savior many Texas fans thought would take them to a national title exactly 20 years after their last looked much more like Tyrone Swoopes than anything resembling the threat Vince Young was behind center. Instead, Texas became the first preseason No. 1 team to lose the opener since 1990.
“For Arch, the expectations were out of control on the outside,” coach Steve Sarkisian said. “But I’d say, let’s finish the book before we judge it, right? This is one chapter and we’ve got a long season to go.”
Sarkisian is correct to spin things that way. But the overarching narrative about his quarterback is closer to the chant that rang out in the fourth quarter: .
If Manning didn’t understand what it was like to truly be a Manning in college football, he will now. It’s one thing to have that name on the back of the jersey when the preseason hype train is rolling right along, it’s another to carry it after a loss where you come up far short.
Manning at least seems to have already picked up on that. He addressed some of his errant throws, including a looping interception by Ohio State corner Jermaine Mathews Jr. in the third quarter.
“I forced it,” Manning said. “I should have taken off and made a play with my feet.”
The silver lining is that no matter how bad Manning was, the loss is in no way destructive to Texas’s goals of winning the SEC or making a run in the College Football Playoff.
Far more concerning long term might have been the efforts of Manning’s primary play-caller in Sarkisian. He once again had few answers for how to score in the red zone (0 for 2 on Saturday after ranking 101st in the category last season) and was overmatched by new Ohio State defensive coordinator Matt Patricia.
The longtime Patriots assistant and ex-Lions coach had not called plays in college and last coached in a game at this level in 2003 when he was a graduate assistant at Syracuse. Yet on Saturday, he was the ultimate chessmaster against someone who had developed a reputation for being one of the best offensive minds in the game.
“I know what kind of coach he is. I see him every day—you guys don’t,” an elated Ohio State head coach Ryan Day said about Patricia, one of two new coordinators this season with the team. “All the work that you put in the dark doesn’t come to light until this first game.”
“I think that they have a very good secondary, and I thought their ability to disguise coverages in the first half was at an elite level. I wouldn’t say a good level, but an elite level,” Sarkisian said. “That starts with Caleb Downs. He’s very savvy. He’s very smart. They’re able to hold coverages and whether it was a two-deep shell rolling into one high, one high playing two deep, the variations of Cover 2 they played against us, they minimized the explosive plays.”
Indeed, Texas had just three rushes over 10 yards and four pass plays of similar length. All but one came in the second half after the Longhorns tweaked a few things at halftime.
Missed opportunities were not limited to just explosive plays for the Longhorns, who outgained Ohio State 336 yards to 203. They largely kept star wideout Jeremiah Smith—the actual best player in college football—generally in check with six catches for 43 yards on 10 targets and made Julian Sayin look solid, if unspectacular, in his own debut as a starting quarterback in a 13-of-20 outing for 126 yards and a touchdown.
If you had told anybody on the Texas sideline before the game those numbers for Ohio State’s surest thing and biggest unknown, they probably would have wondered how much the Longhorns won by.
In reality, it never felt like they came close to triumphing even before Manning’s pass on fourth down to Jack Endries came up short of the sticks in the final 90 seconds.
“I wouldn’t be surprised to see them again,” Sarkisian said. “We’ll be fine. We’ve got work to do.”
That starts at the most important position on the field and with the player which garnered so much attention that it even overshadowed the final sign-off of ESPN’s beloved analyst Lee Corso before kickoff.
“They’re a good team. They’ve got a bunch of good players. Obviously, they’re the reigning champs,” Manning said. “But I thought we could have played better and I could have played a lot better.”
There’s still plenty of time for that kind of Western to play out, still plenty of games for Manning to show he’s the young gunslinger that made him the prohibitive Heisman Trophy favorite coming into Week 1.
Until that transpires, however, the euphoria that became Arch Madness will take on a far sadder tone for the quarterback and the Texas program he carries on his shoulders.
