Quinn Ewers has gone to the NFL, and the national championship dream for the Texas Longhorns rests on young Arch Manning’s shoulders. But this isn’t a cause of concern, since it was always going to be this way. If anything, Arch Manning provides quality and talent along with that storied Manning name to bolster his case. But if things go sideways for the QB, there’s just one thing that can derail it and i.e., the looming threat of a mid-season injury. This is something even Steve Sarkisian is concerned about and is actively working to mitigate.

You cannot avoid injuries, since they are a part of the game, but you sure can plan for them. That’s exactly what Steve Sarkisian is out to do, having learned this the hard way. For instance, just last year, we saw Sarkisian’s top quarterback Quinn Ewers miss two full games after he suffered an Oblique injury against UTSA in Week 3. Then in Week 7, Ewers suffered an Ankle injury against Oklahoma and reported having aggravated his existing ankle issues. These injuries visibly reduced his mobility and pocket presence, especially against Georgia, in which Ewers completed just 25 passes out of 43 and had trouble evading pressures.

Even injury woes weren’t new. In 2023, he missed two games against BYU and Kansas State due to similar issues. While Arch Manning has quite a clean bill of health, partly because he hasn’t been the QB1 in many games, the problems Sarkisian faced in 2023 and 2024  still make him wary of going without a reliable backup. So, in a 27th May SEC press briefing, the head coach came out with a clear plan as to what he is going to do for the QB room in 2025.

“We’ve had four straight years where our starting QBs have gone down. We’ve got two young, talented guys, but adding an older, experienced QB puts us in the best spot for a long season. You need depth to survive 17 games,” said Steve Sarkisian. Currently, apart from Arch Manning, Texas has Trey Owens as the third-string quarterback and Joe Tatum as the fifth-string quarterback. However, none of these QBs can be considered a reliable backup, which is why Sarkisian added an experienced QB recently.

Trey Owens is a red-shirt freshman who came in as a 4-star, 20th-ranked QB in the country last year. Owens’s only significant appearance was against UTSA, where he passed for 19 yards on 4 attempts. So, the Texas head coach went into the transfer portal and added Matthew Caldwell from the Troy Trojans. Caldwell last year played in 10 games for Troy and passed for 1,608 yards for 13 touchdowns. His experience makes him the perfect fit to lead the Longhorns in case Arch Manning goes down due to injury. While injury was one of the reasons for the QB addition, Steve Sarkisian echoed some genuine concerns, too.

Steve Sarkisian sounds an alarm on college football’s future

In the BCS era, CFB teams typically played 12 games in the regular season, excluding the national championship game. So in total, a championship team had to play 13 games. Then came the 4-team playoff era, where the winning team had to play 12 regular season games, and 1 Conference championship game, the semifinal game, and then the final game, for a total of 15 games. Even in this scenario, a team could likely remain undefeated and win the championship. We even saw LSU going 15-0 in 2019 and Clemson going 15-0 in 2018. But in a 12-team playoff, is it possible to go undefeated?

Steve Sarkisian rightfully termed doing the feat in the current era as being nearly impossible. “Now more than ever, you know, the length of the season. Last we played 16 games, and that was just to get to the semi-finals, really good 17, right?… I don’t know if we’ll ever see an undefeated national champion again. If we do, that’s a really good team…Because of the quality of the opponents you play, it’s so difficult to stay healthy….This idea of somebody’s going to go 16-0 and college football, man, post a statue up somewhere of that team because I just don’t know if that’s going to happen again. “

Sarkisian is absolutely spot on with his take this time because winning seventeen games in a season is a feat that is quite difficult to achieve. Injuries will surely plague the team, and fatigue will be a concern. The head coach even raised concerns after the season ended about player fatigue and even canceled the spring open scrimmage on account of that. All in all, Sakrisian seems to be ready with his squad depth and QB room, but he still will have to be wary of injuries in other departments. 

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