Texas has ‘strong belief’ in their chances to land 5-Star QB Arch Manning

This weekend will be one of the biggest points of the recruiting timeline this offseason for second-year head coach Steve Sarkisian and the Texas football program. With Texas hosting multiple top-tier blue-chip targets of their 2023 and 2024 recruiting classes on campus this weekend, most fans on the Forty Acres are directly zoned in on what’s happening on the recruiting trail.

And there isn’t a single target of the Longhorns on the recruiting trail with more buzz surrounding him this weekend than the elite five-star Isidore Newman quarterback Arch Manning. As Texas is hosting Manning on campus for the first time in 2022 this weekend, there is obviously going to continue to be a ton of conversation involving his recruitment and visit in particular.

It sounds like there is growing confidence as to where Texas sits in the race to land a commitment from Manning in the midst of his weekend visit to Austin. Sark and the Longhorns staff seem to be doing a great job on the recruiting trail in terms of making the right impression with Manning’s camp.

This is a trend that remained strong dating back to last summer too. The traction that Sark and quarterbacks coach AJ Milwee have with Manning’s camp is undoubted. But the fact that Texas is competing with the likes of the Alabama Crimson Tide and Georgia Bulldogs as the presumed group of top three schools in the recruitment of Manning makes this a challenging battle.

Yet, the discussion surrounding Texas’ position among the top schools for Manning at the moment seems to continue to favor them. According to a report from Horns247 on March 26 (paid content), there is growing confidence in Texas’ position right now in the Manning sweepstakes.

Texas football gaining more confidence for where they sit in the Arch Manning sweepstakes this spring

It sounds like there is a “strong belief” in where Texas stands at this moment with Manning in the midst of this weekend visit. But it’s hard to tell if this is more of an overreaction to the multi-day weekend visit for Manning on the Forty Acres or if this is legitimately-warranted confidence in where Texas actually stands in this recruitment.

I personally believe that this growing confidence is at least mostly warranted. This is still a recruitment that can change pretty fast, though, as Manning is in the midst of three straight weekend visits to Georgia, Texas, and then Alabama (in that order).

Texas is looking to build on the two commits they currently have in their 2023 class with one of the biggest visit weekends of the spring currently going on in Austin. Sark and the Longhorns staff are hosting Manning among roughly a couple dozen key targets ranging all the way up to the 2025 recruiting cycle this weekend.