Texas Longhorns quarterback Arch Manning, a former five-star recruit who is entering his third season in Austin, was rated as the No. 1 overall player in the 2023 recruiting class according to 247Sports.
While it seems obvious that a talented quarterback from the Manning family should be the No. 1 overall player in the nation, not everyone agreed that Arch was ranked properly.
The critics pointed to the fact that Manning played against less-than-stellar competition while suiting up for Isidore Newman in New Orleans.
“Manning is already overrated,” wrote recruiting insider Mike Farrell in early 2024. “I’ve said that many times. If his name were Arch Smith and you watched his high school film at that awful level of competition, you’d 3-star him. But alas, people fall for the last name and hype.”
That was quite a take from Farrell that doesn’t look great in retrospect (Manning looked very much like a five-star when he saw the field for Texas during the 2024 season).
While I’m sure Manning doesn’t agree with that assessment of his talent, he doesn’t dispute that he faced terrible competition in high school.
A clip posted on social media this week showed Manning responding to various tweets/social media posts and during one clip, which compared Arch to NFL running back Derrick Henry, the Texas quarterback admitted that he didn’t face the best competition during his time at Isidore Newman.
“I wish I was Derrick Henry, he’s a great looking athlete,” says Manning in the clip. “I also played against terrible competition in high school. Not terrible, but like, smaller competition in high school, so it’s not really saying much.”
Manning paused to correct himself after saying “terrible”, but the Freudian slip speaks for itself.
Ultimately, it doesn’t matter what kind of competition Arch played against in high school — he looks like a future early round NFL Draft pick.
Great players rise to the level of the competition they’re facing. And that certainly appears to be true for Arch Manning.
