Mar 15, 2026
NFLFirst & TenAustin
No crowd. No broadcast. Just a 21-year-old in pads doing the thing he has been doing since he could grip a ball. That is the whole point.
Arch Manning took his first snaps of spring practice in Austin this week. Let me say that again, because I want you to really hear it.
Continue reading →Mar 15, 2026
NCAAAustin
Manning returns with 22 starts and a new receiver target. The defense has eight starters back. Spring practice is the most honest diagnostic in college football.
The University of Texas opened spring practice this week with Arch Manning taking first-team snaps, beginning what figures to be the most scrutinized spring quarterback evaluation in college football entering 2026. Manning enters his junior season having started 22 games for the Longhorns, producing performances that ranged from among the best in the country to constrained by scheme and circumstance in ways that made evaluation difficult. The evaluation community has not reached consensus on his ceiling, and spring practice is the first opportunity to gather new data in a controlled environment without the noise of a game week.
Continue reading →Mar 14, 2026
NCAAAustin
Bill Connelly's pre-spring rankings identify three prospects whose spring tape will determine whether the projections were earned. The evaluation cycle is the most honest diagnostic in college football.
Spring practice opens across the country over the next three weeks, and the most consequential evaluation cycle for Power 4 programs in 2026 is at quarterback — a position group defined this offseason by transfers, developmental questions, and the long shadow of a class that left in the NFL Draft. Bill Connelly's pre-spring quarterback rankings for all 68 Power 4 programs, published this week at ESPN, identified Arch Manning, CJ Carr, and Julian Sayin as the three prospects attracting the most national attention entering spring. Each arrives in his spring cycle with meaningful production behind him and meaningful questions still unanswered.
Continue reading →Mar 10, 2026
NCAAAustin
Sarkisian enters year six with the most experienced quarterback in Austin in years and a defense that needs to show it can hold up against the top half of the SEC.
Texas opened spring practice Monday in Austin under Steve Sarkisian, entering his sixth season with a program that has won consistently in the Big 12 and now faces its second full season in the SEC with an expectation that the step up in competition is fully priced in. The Longhorns finished 10-3 in 2025 in their first SEC season, which was widely read as a reasonable outcome given the difficulty of the schedule and the transition. The internal expectation heading into 2026 is different — the program has recruited at an elite level since Sarkisian's arrival, and the roster depth is now at a point where the 2025 record feels like a floor rather than a ceiling.
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