TAMPA, Fla. — By his name alone, Arch Manning is subject to an unprecedented and nearly unfair level of high expectations. He has a football legend for a grandfather and two uncles who won two Super Bowls each. So, when asked what quarterbacks he compares himself to, the Texas junior politely declines. “I’m trying to do better at not comparing myself to others,” Manning said Thursday, wearing a burnt orange tie as he talked to a few dozen reporters in the final session of SEC Media Days. “Comparison, they say, is the thief of joy. So I’m trying to not compare myself to others. I guess that’s y’all’s job.” No college player faces higher standards in 2026, and that was evident at SEC Media Days. Manning’s session was the most anticipated among the players in attendance this week. And somehow Manning has been here before, his reputation preceding him a year ago when he was a first-year starter taking over for the Longhorns. “You know, Arch Manning, a year ago, wasn’t on social media or on television saying ‘I’m going to be the first pick of the draft.’ He wasn’t on television saying ‘I’m going to win the Heisman Trophy,'” Texas coach Steve Sarkisian said Thursday. “All he did was work really hard. All he did was try to be the best teammate he could be. And then we had some failures as a team. He didn’t have [them]. He didn’t play the way of what he was capable of playing. “What he got put through probably would have melted or destroyed 99% of people in his shoes. All he did was stay consistent and true to who he was, just continue to work hard, continue to be a great teammate, to get better.” A year ago, Manning was the buzz of college football, anointed as a Heisman Trophy favorite despite the fact he had just 95 pass attempts in his first two years at Texas. It was too much, too soon, born of his quarterback pedigree, but bad NFL fan bases were actively hoping their teams would lose enough to land him at the top of the 2026 NFL Draft. Manning’s team stumbled out of the gates. Texas lost its opener to Ohio State 14-7, with Manning throwing for just 170 yards. After three non-conference wins, the Longhorns, still ranked No. 9, lost at unranked Florida, with Manning throwing two interceptions in the loss. College football’s spotlight shifted quickly and Indiana’s Fernando Mendoza kept winning — and impressing — to keep it on him. With the spotlight shifted off of him, Manning found himself in the final eight games of Texas’ 2025 season. The Longhorns went 7-1, their only loss to No. 5 Georgia, and Manning had 15 touchdowns against two interceptions in those games. Texas beat four ranked teams in that span — No. 6 Oklahoma, No. 9 Vanderbilt, No. 3 Texas A&M and No. 18 Michigan — and Manning had seven touchdowns and zero interceptions in those four upset wins. Then, Manning opted to stay at Texas, which again installed the Longhorns among the teams to beat for a national title. The supporting cast around him is stronger. This past year, Texas didn’t have an offensive player drafted in the first five rounds, but it could have four first-round picks in 2027. Receiver Cam Coleman, a transfer from Auburn, could go in the top 10, as could returning tackle Trevor Goosby, with receiver Ryan Wingo another potential first-rounder. Longhorns edge rusher Colin Simmons is also projected as a likely first-round pick. Manning is seen by many as a potential No. 1 pick, which could be held by the Arizona Cardinals, New York Jets or Miami Dolphins, based on preseason expectations. He’s again the oddsmakers’ favorite for the Heisman, tied with Notre Dame’s C.J. Carr as the current favorite, and he has the best odds to be the No. 1 overall draft pick, but there’s no consensus on where he’ll fall in a deep and talented group of quarterback prospects. FOX Sports NFL Draft Rob Rang had Manning being the No. 1 overall pick in his first 2027 NFL mock draft, making him the first of five quarterbacks to go off the board. FOX Sports lead college football analyst Joel Klatt also rates Manning highly entering the season, placing him second behind Oregon’s Dante Moore in his top-10 quarterback ranking for 2026. However, The Athletic placed Manning seventh in its ranking of the starting quarterbacks for all 138 FBS programs, behind Ole Miss’ Trinidad Chambliss, Oregon’s Dante Moore, Carr, Miami’s Darius Mensah, Ohio State’s Julian Sayin and Oklahoma State’s Drew Mestemaker. One NFL front-office executive told me his team had Manning graded slightly higher than Mendoza in this past year’s draft evaluations — higher than the No. 1 overall pick in a down year for the position — but there are still lingering concerns and things he can work on. That starts with overall inconsistency, understandable for a first-year starter, but the overall makeup of how he carries himself is what NFL teams want to see. He has accurate, on-time throws to all windows, but also “unusual, head-scratching misses” in between them at times. Texas’ schedule will give Manning ample opportunities to show what he can do against the best in college football, with six games against teams likely to be ranked in preseason. He gets another shot at Ohio State on Sept. 12, goes to uncle Peyton’s Tennessee Volunteers on Sept. 26, has Oklahoma in Dallas on Oct. 10, grandpa Archie and uncle Eli’s Ole Miss Rebels on Oct. 24, then games at LSU on Nov. 14 and Texas A&M on Nov. 27, plus whatever the postseason might bring. Manning’s reputation is strong within the SEC, even with coaches new to the conference. Florida’s Jon Sumrall, whose Gators face the Longhorns for a third year in a row this fall, said he got to know Manning when he was at Tulane in Arch’s hometown. “What a great young man,” Sumrall said of Manning at SEC Media Days earlier this week. “When I was a coach at Tulane, Archie would shoot me a text or a phone call and say, ‘Hey, is it OK in May in some downtime if Arch comes over and throws?’ I’m like, ‘Yeah, and ask him if he wants to transfer,’ because he wasn’t a starter yet. I’d go out there and might watch him throw or [father] Cooper or whoever might be out there, and I’d be like, ‘I would like to coach that guy.’ He’s a good player. “I really have a lot of respect for the Manning family as a whole. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree with Arch and how he carries himself.” Texas just missed out on the 12-team college football playoff last year, and Sarkisian said what impressed him was how the late-season success didn’t change Manning, who kept his head down with humility when it would have been easy not to do so. “He’s a fantastic player at the end of the year, but he didn’t go back on social media and say I told you so,” Sarkisian said. “And all he’s done this year is continue to work hard again. So there’s always going to be outside opinions of that guy, and that comes with the territory. He understands that. “I think he learned a lot about himself last year, about dealing with adversity and overcoming, and I think he learned about his teammates and the support that they gave him, and recognized the mental and physical toughness that he has to play the position and be their leader. I think he’s grown into a great leader for us, and I’m very proud of Arch for the way he’s carried himself.” Peyton and Eli Manning are beloved not only for their football, but also for a self-deprecating sense of humor that allows them to have an everyman-likeability despite all their on-field success. Arch has shown promising signs of that, talking Thursday about how he’s taken up golf as a respite from football, competitive yet relaxing, a mental break to enjoy something he knows he’s not that good at yet. “I hit my driver far,” he said when asked for his best club. “I just don’t know where it’s going.” Asked his handicap, he smiles and says it’s “probably around a 10.” “Broke 80 for the first time last week,” Manning said of a round at Austin’s Barton Creek course, where “one of my buddies had a friend that was a member.” He stops himself: “It probably was an 80. I gave myself a putt.” He said the best golfer in the Manning family is probably Peyton, and concedes he’ll have to stop golfing in a week or so to focus on football “until February,” keeping everything in play for himself and Texas football. He’ll graduate in December, but won’t even commit to this being his final season of college football, keeping his focus on the here and now and his own expectations of himself. “I don’t really worry as much about legacy,” he said when asked about his future. “I’m just trying to be the best teammate I can be right now, to help us win games on Saturday and have fun while I’m doing it. I think the more fun we have, the better I play, and the better we play as a team.”