Texas coach Steve Sarkisian: Arch Manning's legs add new 'twist' to Longhorn offense
As a head coach, Texas football’s Steve Sarkisian said all the right things while answering a myriad of questions about backup Arch Manning, starter Quinn Ewers and the Longhorns’ quarterback room during his weekly press conference Monday inside Royal-Memorial Stadium.
But as a play-caller, Sarkisian must feel almost like a kid in a toy store. As Manning showed off during a 67-yard touchdown run in Saturday’s win, the 6-foot-4, 225-pound redshirt freshman can scoot down the field, especially for a signal-caller his size.
Manning, the top recruit in the nation in 2023, remains a pass-first quarterback with arm talent that has already drawn attention from NFL scouts. But a running threat at quarterback would be a nice, new plaything for Sarkisian to use — assuming Manning gets the start with Ewers dubbed “questionable” by his coach.
“I don't think we're ever going to walk out here and our quarterback's going to carry the ball 10 to 20 times a game,” he said. “That's just not who we are. There's a lot of ways to skin a cat, but that's not the way we like to do it.
“But that doesn't mean we can't utilize it some at critical moments to keep people honest. And so that's kind of how we'll move going forward.”
Translation? Texas won’t run power after power with its quarterback like Alabama did with Jalen Hurts in 2016, when Sarkisian stepped in as the Tide’s interim offensive coordinator and play-caller. But it won’t abandon the quarterback run like it has the past two seasons, when Ewers had just 21 yards rushing on 84 total carries, factoring in sacks.
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Arch Manning’s legs add ‘a twist’ to the offense
According to Sarkisian, it’s not the yards Manning can get with his legs — he had an official 53 yards rushing against UTSA after taking a couple of sacks — that challenges opponents. It’s the threat of the run that will help keep defenses just a little more off balance.
“The more things we can do really well, I feel like the tougher we are to defend,” Sarkisian said. “That’s the run game, the (run-pass option), the play-action pass, the screen game, the drop-back pass. Well, now all of a sudden, we have this element of quarterback run that we can add as a twist, too.”
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What past QB did Sarkisian use in the running game?
Sarkisian likes to say that his teams “will never major in the quarterback run,” which is evident by his history. After he returned to Alabama in 2019 and 2020 following a stint in the NFL, Sarkisian hardly ever used Tide quarterbacks Mac Jones and Tua Tagovailoa in the running game.
During his two seasons as head coach at USC in 2014 and 2015, quarterback Cody Kessler rarely ran. Casey Thompson did pick up 155 yards on the ground in Sarkisian’s first season at Texas in 2021, but most of those came on broken plays by a 5-7 squad that had its issues moving the ball.
But a glance at a couple of Sarkisian’s squads at Washington in 2009 and 2010 show that the coach won’t shy away from using the quarterback run, even with a pro-style passer behind center. The Huskies had All-Pac 12 quarterback Jake Locker, a 6-2, 225-pound physical force picked by Tennessee in the first round of the 2011 NFL draft. He ran for 773 yards and 13 TDs on 226 carries over a two-year span.
“He was a physical guy like Arch, and was really kind of put together well,” Sarkisian said. “Physically, that's probably the best comparison.”
But Sarkisian quickly pointed out a major difference between this Texas team, ranked No. 2 in the US LBM coaches poll and No. 1 in the Associated Press Top 25, and his early Washington squads. Those Huskies didn’t have many options when it came to moving the ball while these Longhorns are loaded at the skill spots.
“At that time, we weren't very good, and so I had to run him, and it probably wasn't fair to him,” he said. “He got beat up some along the way.”
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This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Texas football: Arch Manning's legs add 'twist' to offense
