Is Texas still the ‘team to beat’ for 5-Star QB Arch Manning?

This coming weekend, the biggest target of the 2023 Texas football recruiting class for second-year head coach Steve Sarkisian and quarterbacks coach AJ Milwee will be on campus for yet another visit. The elite five-star Isidore Newman quarterback Arch Manning is slated to have what promises to be a weekend visit of enormous importance coming up in the next couple of days.

While the Longhorns staff visited Manning multiple times since the turn of the calendar year, this will be the first time in 2022 that he will have visited Austin. He has visited Austin on multiple occasions already, though.

With this visit coming up for the Longhorns this weekend with Manning, among multiple other top blue-chip targets of the 2023 and 2024 recruiting classes, the discussion resumes of where Texas fits into his picture of top schools.

The consensus seems to be at this point that Texas sits in a top group of around three schools that also includes the Georgia Bulldogs and Alabama Crimson Tide. But some recent indicators are emerging that Texas could be getting a slight edge in certain respects over the competition in the Manning sweepstakes.

According to a report from Inside Texas on March 24 (part of the On3 Network, paid content), Texas is still the “team to beat” in the race to land a commitment from Manning. But the theme from this message around the recruiting media and the overall tone from the Manning camp looks to be that his recruitment could still be far from over.

Texas getting the edge right now is good, but it’s definitely anything but a guarantee that Sark and the Longhorns will eventually land the commitment of Manning. There’s still a lot of work for them to do this offseason and potentially even this coming season.

The question remains, though, where does Texas stack up against Texas and Alabama ahead of Manning’s weekend visit to Austin?

Where does Texas football stack up right now with 5-Star QB Arch Manning compared to Georgia and Alabama

Georgia just hosted Manning for a visit last weekend. And that went well by all accounts. It sounds like the Dawgs are even starting to potentially get an edge over the Crimson Tide following their National Championship last season and a couple of successful visits since last fall.

For a good while now, there were indications that Georgia sat firmly in the midst of the top two or three schools for Arch. That likely remains the case this spring.

Moreover, Alabama recently seemed to make a big move in the headlines in the recruitment of Manning when it came out that legendary head coach Nick Saban was essentially waiting to offer any other 2023 quarterback until Arch’s decision is announced. But the actual impact that has in the race to land a commitment from Arch is yet to be seen.

The fact that Alabama is making Arch such a priority still might not have much of an impact in his camp. There seemed to be a bit of an overreaction when this news first came out of how much the Crimson Tide were putting into his recruitment. That has calmed down a bit as this week has moved along.

All in all, you have to like the position Texas sits in with Arch at the moment. And it doesn’t really feel like much has changed this month compared to how his top group of schools seemingly stacked up in February.

It’s hard to find a whole lot of separation right now between Texas and Georgia in the race to land a commitment from Arch, depending on how his weekend visit in Austin turns out. Alabama does look to be at least a bit behind Texas and Georgia this spring, but that could obviously change by the fall.

The message here should be that a group of roughly three top schools looks to have emerged with Arch. But it will take at least a few months for the rest of his recruitment to play out to provide more clarity among the top group of schools.