247Sports incorrectly tabs Texas football as a 2023 QB battle to watch

Look, I get it, there is a lot of intrigue surrounding the arrival of the elite five-star Isidore Newman quarterback signee and early enrollee Arch Manning with Texas football for the spring semester. Many recruiting services have Arch ranked as the top 2023 recruit in the nation. Thus, there is obviously going to be a ton of hype surrounding his arrival on a college campus.

As it pertains to the current state of Texas’ quarterback room, though, I don’t think that Arch’s arrival on campus is going to change anything in terms of who the starter will be in 2023.

Unless something drastic changes this offseason, the starting quarterback for head coach Steve Sarkisian and the Longhorns next season will be rising redshirt sophomore Quinn Ewers. And as of this moment, I don’t know of anything that would change the status of Ewers as the starting quarterback again for the 2023 campaign.

But there are still multiple media outlets that have mentioned Texas among the quarterback battles to watch in spring ball. A piece from Brad Shepard of Bleacher Report on Jan. 10 tabbed the Longhorns among the dozen or so programs in the FBS that will have one of the “most intriguing 2023 starting quarterback battles”.

It doesn’t take long when reading this piece from BR to notice that the writer doesn’t really believe that this will be a quarterback battle this offseason.

"With Hudson Card out of the picture, this is a Ewers-Manning battle. Ewers will win it, but Sark will gradually work Manning into some reps as well."

Don’t pay attention to lists including Quinn Ewers, Arch Manning, and Texas football among QB battles to watch

This is a situation where BR just likes the headline of Arch being able to compete with Ewers for the quarterback job to stir up some controversy in 2023.

Another case of this type of inclusion in a list of quarterback battles to watch for the Longhorns surfaced in a piece from Chris Hummer of 247Sports on Jan. 27.

This piece from Hummer of 247Sports even discounts the reality of there being a quarterback battle for the Longhorns in spring ball with the first sentence for that part of the list.

"This is the most high-profile competition of the offseason and it really isn’t even a competition."

Why include Texas on these lists if you know that there isn’t any actual quarterback competition?

To sum this up, I guess I would expect this from BR to include the “Ewers-Manning battle” on a list of projected starting quarterbacks among “intriguing” battles for 2023. BR is well-known for coming up with lists like that.

However, 247Sports including the Longhorns in a list of quarterback battles to watch in the spring can be pretty misleading. That can create unnecessary drama where this isn’t really any smoke in the Texas quarterback room.

The only way that I would personally agree with Arch and the Longhorns being mentioned in a list of quarterback battles for spring ball this offseason would be if it talks about the competition for the backup job. That is obviously not what these lists are getting at.

We saw how important the backup was for Texas during the 2022 season when junior quarterback Hudson Card was called upon in relief for the injured Ewers against the Alabama Crimson Tide in Week 2. Card was solid for the Longhorns in the few games he started last season, including a career-game in a win at home over the West Virginia Mountaineers on Oct. 1.

For now, though, let’s calm down on the talk of Texas having any “quarterback battle” worth watching on the national stage.