Texas Post Game Recap

Zach Smith · 2026-09-13T14:04:20+00:00

Arch Manning Didn't Get Better. Sark Stopped Asking Him To. Texas 24, Ohio State 23. The Longhorns scored all 21 of their points in the fourth quarter and everybody is going to credit the quarterback. The tape says a coordinator changed the plan. Meanwhile Ryan Day sat on a twenty-point lead with fourteen minutes left and never called another football game. Ohio State led 23-3 in the third quarter in Austin. They scored zero points in the fourth. Texas scored twenty-one. Two coordinators decided this game and neither one of them plays quarterback. Eleven of thirteen, and almost none of it is his Arch Manning's fourth quarter looks like a coming-out party. 11-of-13 for 99 yards and a touchdown after going 12-of-24 for 96 with a pick through three. Now look at what he was asked to do. His average depth of target was around nine yards through three quarters. In the fourth it was about six. He did not attempt a single throw past twenty yards in the entire quarter. Five of his thirteen attempts went to Emmett Mosley, all five caught, 57 yards, mostly at or near the line. And Texas ran it 24 times for 103 yards after halftime. That is not a quarterback figuring it out. That is Steve Sarkisian looking at three quarters of film, deciding his quarterback could not win a down for him, and building a fourth quarter where he didn't have to. Quick game. RPOs. Run the football. Let the tempo and the clock do the work. One more piece and it's the honest one: Ohio State stopped hitting him. Both sacks and every meaningful hurry came in the first three quarters. Give any quarterback in America a clean pocket and a six-yard route tree and he'll complete eleven of thirteen. What he actually did with the football I wrote in the offseason that Arch Manning is an out-of-system quarterback. When it's broken he can make throws almost nobody in this sport can make. When it's clean and pretty, he gets confused. Saturday was the cleanest possible confirmation. Third-and-4 at his own 31 in the first quarter. A receiver pops open immediately for the first down. He doesn't pull the trigger. He scans, he starts to run, and Riley Pettijohn sacks him for ten. Throw it. It was there before he finished his drop. Two-minute drill before the half. Matt Patricia drops eight into cover two. All the time in the world, a receiver wide open in the middle of the field, and he misses it badly. Third-and-7 in the third quarter. Same hole in the same coverage, Mosley sitting in the middle of the field. He misses it again. Then a post to Cam Coleman on third-and-15 that went five yards over his head. A deep post into a single-high safety that he overthrew past both the receiver and the defender. A first-down ball from his own 25 that was nearly picked. A deep over that Earl Little Jr. read perfectly and dropped, which should have been six the other way. And a checkdown thrown over a running back's head with a rusher closing. Now be fair to him, because the box score isn't. The interception is not his. Sark isolated Coleman on Jalen McClain, Coleman was wide open, and it was a good throw. It bounced off his body and McClain caught it at the 12. Texas also dropped five balls. Coleman's became the pick. Ryan Wingo dropped a touchdown from the 30. Emaree Winston dropped an RPO on a drive they needed and got pulled right after. Spencer Shannon dropped a spot route delivered high and hot on third-and-6. A running back dropped a checkdown on the final drive. Take all five out and he's still the same player I graded in July. I've got him at a D. The C-plus as a pure passer I gave him off the Florida tape is generous after this. Ryan Day stopped calling plays with fourteen minutes left Now the part Columbus has to sit with. Ohio State ran 39 early-down plays in the first three quarters. In the fourth quarter, across three possessions, they ran eleven. The mix barely moved. The volume evaporated, because the drives stopped happening. Go through the decisions in order. Third quarter, 11:55 left, fourth-and-4 at the Texas 39, up 20-3. He punts. Kicks it 26 net yards to the 13. Up seventeen against an offense that had scored three points, and he hands them the ball instead of trying to end it. Fourth quarter, up thirteen, fourteen minutes on the clock. They start milking the play clock down to five. You are not protecting a lead at that point. You are handing possessions to a team that needs them. And then there's the call I keep coming back to: a Bo Jackson stretch to the boundary in field goal range that lost a yard. That's the same boundary stretch that got stuffed twice against Ball State ten days earlier. It didn't work against a MAC team. Compare that to what Sarkisian did on his own side of the fifty. He went for it on fourth-and-9 from his own 42 and told the room afterward exactly why: "No, that's a loser thing. Winners win, baby. Keeping it close? They didn't hire me to keep it close." One coach went for it on fourth-and-9 from his own 42. The other punted on fourth-and-4 from the opponent's 39 with a seventeen-point lead. Whatever you think of Sark's quote, the scoreboard settled the argument. They quit throwing it to Jeremiah Smith This is the number that made me put my drink down. Through three quarters: 13 targets, 8 catches, 164 yards, a touchdown. Fourth quarter: three targets, zero catches. Every single ball Jeremiah Smith caught in this football game came before the fourth quarter. In the quarter where Ohio State needed one drive, the best receiver in college football was targeted three times and finished with nothing. Two of those are on him and I'll say so. A drop on third-and-4 out of press man, and no release on a fade on the drive before the missed field goal. His two worst plays of the night came on the two possessions that mattered most. But look at the third-down distances, because this is the whole story in one table. Through three quarters they faced twelve third downs at an average of 8.6 yards and converted six of them. They converted a third-and-13. They converted two third-and-10s. In the fourth quarter they faced two third downs at an average of 4.0 yards and converted neither. They were better at third-and-long while they were attacking than they were at third-and-short once they started protecting. That isn't bad luck. That's what happens when an offense stops trying to score. The timeout Texas had first-and-goal at the 1 with under a minute left, and all three of their timeouts. Ohio State had one. Day burned it at 0:53. Afterward he said they discussed letting Texas score on second down and decided they wanted to see if they could get off the field. His words: "It didn't work out." Give the defense this much. They got two stops. Hollywood Smothers got stuffed for nothing on first down by Jason Moore and Payton Pierce. On second down Moore punched the ball out at the goal line and Texas recovered it themselves, and the automatic review upheld it as short. Then Smothers went up the middle on third down and it was 24-23. And Ohio State got the ball back at their own 25 with seventeen seconds and no timeouts. A holding call on Austin Siereveld backed them to the 15, Devin McCuin caught five, and Julian Sayin threw a pick from his own 20 that was taken at the Texas 40. That last possession is not a Hail Mary story. That is a team trying to gain forty yards with no way to stop the clock, because the timeout got spent on a goal-line stand that was never going to hold three times.