ESPN reveals historically bad Arch Manning statistic from Ohio State loss

Ohio State held off Texas on Saturday in Saturday afternoon's Week 1 blockbuster bout between two top three teams in Columbus, stripping Texas of their No. 1 preseason ranking quicker than they could even earn it.

Of course, coming into the game, much of the conversation centered around Arch Manning and a Texas team with eyes on the national championship. Well, through 55 minutes of play in Manning's first start of the 2025 season, the Longhorns had zero scores and a 14-point deficit to show for their effort. Manning did lead a late touchdown drive and did his best to give Texas a final chance in the fourth quarter, but his efforts weren't enough.

The final quarter was rather inspiring from Manning, but his passes throughout the day struggled to hit their targets. Now, Texas faced a terrific secondary, but according to ESPN, Manning himself is still to blame for some of the offensive miscues.

On the halftime show of Alabama's game at Florida State, ESPN flashed a graphic on the screen noting that Arch Manning missed the target on 37% of his throws vs. Ohio State. That doesn't sound great, but ESPN added that Arch threw the highest percentage of off-target throws in a game by any Texas quarterback in the last 10 years. Woah.

Texas hasn't rolled off a ton of NFL prospects in the last decade, and while there have been some great college quarterbacks, to score the highest percentage of errant throws in a single game over that span is certainly a rough sign.

Manning only tossed 30 balls against the Buckeyes and still completed 17 of the 30. However, he amassed just 170 yards and one touchdown to go along with one pretty rough interception. Per ESPN, among those other 12 incompletions, 11 were deemed to be off-target throws.

Arch Manning drops in Heisman heirarchy

Arch Manning was the belle of the ball heading into the 2025 college football season as the preseason Heisman Trophy favorite. That is not the case as of Saturday afternoon.

There’s now a two-way race at the top of the leaderboard between two returning QBs — LSU's Garrett Nussmeier and Clemson's Cade Klubnik now lead the way, both tied at +750 to win college football’s highest honor, according to FanDuel Sportsbook. The new pair of Heisman favorites will meet face to face later this evening, as LSU and Clemson square off under the Death Valley lights in Week 1's primetime action.