Sports
A new manager, an underappreciated star and 'something special' are fueling the Guardians
CLEVELAND — Four hours before first pitch, José Ramírez, the face of the franchise and instigator to the stars, is singing Daft Punk’s earworm, “One More Time,” as strikingly off-key as possible. He intentionally butchers the simple hook as he leans back in the black leather chair at his corner locker.
Josh Naylor walks past the JBL PartyBox speaker in the center of the room and triggers the DJ sound effect, which prompts at least one teammate to fist pump like he’s raving on a sticky dance floor at a Jersey Shore nightclub.
Emmanuel Clase is FaceTiming family back home in rural Río San Juan, D.R., and the clucking of chickens would echo throughout the clubhouse if not for Ramírez’s disharmony.
One more time!
Tyler Freeman and David Fry are battling on a Mario Kart arcade machine, an undercard match before Ramírez — who possesses unparalleled skill at swerving Bowser’s stout frame around turtle shells and banana peels — begins challenging teammates for more money than they’ve earned in the big leagues.
One more time!
Austin Hedges strides into the room wearing a red, self-hemmed crop top that reveals his bellybutton and a tease of the shag carpet that covers his chest, and clutches a leather-bound notebook full of scouting reports and other secrets.
One more time!
And then silence — save for the speaker, now shuffling through a Bob Marley medley.
The bustling ceases. The bodies vanish. The room is empty.
Catchers, pitchers, coaches and analysts cram into a room across the hall to review the opposing club’s hitters. Hedges, Fry and Bo Naylor, the club’s catching triumvirate, share the intel they’ve scribbled in their notebooks. Then the pitchers trot out to the left-field grass for an afternoon catch session. Hitters head to the cages to pore over video and take their first hacks.
Manager Stephen Vogt, the new head of the operation, fulfills a slate of media obligations. He reveals just enough charm to remind reporters why he was a beloved player and he guards minor injury details like nuclear codes.
There’s nothing groundbreaking unfolding in Cleveland, where the Guardians have amassed one of baseball’s best records. There’s no secret formula, even for a team with a long-envied starting pitching factory. (Starting pitching has actually been the club’s Achilles’ heel during this wild joyride.)
Ramírez has spurred “Guards Ball,” as Fry calls it — the slashing-and-dashing style of offense that pressures pitchers and defenses until they cave. It propelled them to the playoffs two years ago. This season, aside from more meetings, they’ve added more muscle, more reliable relievers and more magic.
Night after night, it’s working. Chaos, then concentration, then conquering another opponent.
One more time!
The Guardians, implausibly, have been the story of the 2024 MLB season.
“There’s something special here,” Hedges says.
Three hours before first pitch, Guardians infielders join Kai Correa outside the dugout for work with a red machine that sounds like a swarm of scorned hornets as it revs up.
Correa, the club’s field coordinator, oversees everything from the daily bus schedule to infield shifting.
But now he’s sitting on a bucket and resting his red cleats on the black legs of The Heater Slider Lite 360. Thwoop. The apparatus spits out a one-hopper to a kneeling Brayan Rocchio, who’s wearing a white glove that doesn’t quite cover his left hand. Correa toggles a couple dials that alter the speed and angle of the grounder. If the expert level is cranked up during practice, any eighth-inning hop will be a breeze.
Evan Longoria swore by the gadget after partnering with Correa in San Francisco. The three-time Gold Glove Award winner pleaded to use it daily.
In Cleveland, the buy-in started before spring training, when almost the entire roster reported to Goodyear, Ariz., weeks before camp. That included Ramírez, the perennial All-Star. “That guy leads by example better than anybody I’ve ever been around,” Hedges says.
Ramírez is capricious before games, one day offering a reporter his Tesla Cybertruck for $100,000 cash and the next day sizing up Clase for snooping in his locker. But he quickly snaps into game mode and teammates strive to mimic his relentless work ethic, which has fueled a career path that could end in Cooperstown.
“He’s the accountability guy for everything,” Kwan says. “He’s always the lead dog.”
Ramírez swings by Correa’s station to stab at a few choppers from the machine. Later, he huddles with coach J.T. Maguire at a desk outside the clubhouse to study video of a potential tell from that night’s opposing pitcher. A decade into his career, Ramírez still craves every sliver of information that might give him an edge. He says he doesn’t care that he climbed into second place in franchise history in home runs; he just wants to break the club’s 76-year championship hex.
The Guardians have laid the groundwork for that quest with preparation. They hold more pregame meetings than ever before. Players embrace extra defensive work and time in the cage.
A new coaching staff isn’t taking that investment for granted. The Guardians might be the most surprising team in the league, but Hedges says it stems from treating every day like a playoff game. To do that, bench coach Craig Albernaz says, the Guardians must maximize every nanosecond before first pitch.
“We don’t have the experience like Terry Francona does or Bob Melvin does,” Albernaz says, “so we have to err on the side of being over-prepared.”
Two and a half hours before first pitch, coaches file into the manager’s office, one by one. Albernaz has already claimed a seat, with a laptop resting on his thighs. Bullpen coach Brad Goldberg enters, then assistant pitching coach Joe Torres, then a couple of pitching analysts and, finally, pitching coach Carl Willis, who has worked in the organization for much of the last quarter-century.
Other teams pluck pitching gurus from Cleveland’s directory on an annual basis — Matt Blake, Ruben Niebla and Brian Sweeney became pitching coaches for the Yankees, Padres and Royals in recent years — but Willis, a figurehead with decades of experience and an appetite for forward thinking, remains. Fellow coaches refer to him as a “Walking TrackMan,” the device that supplies instant data on a pitcher’s mechanics.
Pitching coach Carl Willis, here in a mound visit with starter Ben Lively, has been a fixture in Cleveland for years. (Jason Miller / Getty Images)
The Guardians’ rotation has uncharacteristically struggled, a result of losing ace Shane Bieber a week into the schedule, missing Gavin Williams for three months and receiving rocky efforts from Triston McKenzie and Logan Allen.
The club’s bullpen, however, has masked many of the team’s shortcomings. Cleveland’s relievers lead the league in ERA by a massive margin. Cade Smith learned he made the Opening Day roster while playing cards with his siblings in a hotel room eight hours before the first pitch of the season. Now, he fills the role of stopper anytime an opponent mounts a rally, whether in the fourth inning or the eighth.
Hunter Gaddis has evolved, without warning, from a scuffling spot starter to a prolific setup man. Tim Herrin, teased by teammates for his baby face and calm demeanor, has worked to improve the quality of his primal shouts as he walks off the mound following an inning-ending strikeout. There have been plenty; he boasts a 2.25 ERA in his first full season.
No reliever presents a more daunting task for hitters than Clase. With magenta-tinted locks dangling beneath his navy cap, he pumps 101-mph cutters past anyone who occupies the batter’s box.
“Clase is the best pitcher in baseball,” Hedges says.
Two hours before first pitch, teammates surround Hedges on a dugout bench as he waxes poetic about the twisted beauty of baseball, a sport that revolves around failure.
It took Hedges years to develop into a leader. In San Diego, he’d scan the lineup while praying his name was absent. He was burdened by the pressure of 162 games, of 150 nightly decisions hinging on how many fingers he flashed his pitcher. During an injured list stint for a balky elbow in 2018, he questioned whether he even wanted to return to the roster.
“So much anxiety of wanting to perform,” he says, “wanting to win, and also being like, ‘I don’t know what’s happening to my brain. I can’t freaking think.’ Luckily, eventually, in time and experience, all you can have is awareness that this is happening. So, it’s, ‘This is normal. Am I going to be a gangster, or am I going to give in?’”
Austin Hedges, who has become a key part of the Guardians on and off the field, congratulates Emmanuel Clase earlier this season. (Nick Cammett / Getty Images)
Hedges needed to come to Cleveland, to win in Cleveland, to leave Cleveland and to win a World Series last fall with Texas to understand what the Guardians were lacking and how he could provide it. He’s Vogt’s lieutenant in the clubhouse. When the two connected for a 10-minute call over the winter as the Guardians recruited Hedges back to the organization, Vogt hung up and said to himself, “This is the guy.”
The notebook Hedges constantly grips in his left hand was a wedding gift from ex-teammate Clayton Richard, who taught him how to make a difference on days he wasn’t in the lineup. This season, Hedges has been as much a mental coach, guidance counselor and senior motivation coordinator as catcher, but he cherishes the role. It’s a position Vogt held for 15 years in the minors and the majors, a catcher with a coach’s brain.
“He’s my voice,” Vogt says.
As teammates flock to him in the dugout, Hedges recommends a book about daily stoicism, a tenet this team has adopted. Vogt says he loves managing a team of clichés, players who not only rely on trite mantras to autopilot their way through interviews, but also actually adhere to them. One day at a time. Caring for each other. Turning the page after a win or loss. Banal, sure. But rooted in truth, Vogt says.
The players appreciate that Vogt shows no panic — not when they lost Bieber to elbow surgery, nor when they dropped three straight to the historically inept White Sox in May, nor when their once-massive AL Central lead dwindled last week after a seven-game skid. An early-season closed-door meeting was really just a chance to commend Hedges on eight years of service time, which alleviated some tension after a couple of defeats.
GO DEEPER
The wild highs and lows that prepared Stephen Vogt to be the Cleveland Guardians’ manager
Vogt has geared up for this opportunity since he was a middling A-baller eyeing a coaching future, when blossoming into a two-time All-Star seemed delusional. He has made a seamless transition to his new seat, one previously occupied by Francona, a future Hall of Famer. Hedges marvels at the way Vogt delivers the right message to the right person at the right time.
Of course, Vogt downplays his influence, insisting he’s “just a pretty face” who lets players be themselves, even if that means Scott Barlow standing in his “fish flip flops” while creating chainsaw noises into a semi-crushed Red Bull can or a group of players barking like dogs in the dugout. Fry and Hedges welcomed trade acquisition Alex Cobb to his new team in early August and Fry figured Cobb was thinking, “These weirdos, these guys are a bunch of losers.”
Really, though, it’s a tight-knit group. One day, Canadian-born Bo Naylor is teaching a card game to Jhonkensy Noel, a native of the Dominican Republic, in fluent Spanish. Another day, Fry and Ben Lively shout at the clubhouse TV until Tommy Fleetwood’s drive settles in the thickest cut of rough. Every day, in the first inning, the relievers engage in a cutthroat round of trivia, centering on anything from Venezuelan athletes to Olympic history to how many triangles can be found in a particular picture.
After a Noel missile to the outfield seats fueled a win in late June, Tanner Bibee and three relievers waited at the clubhouse entrance to supply the linebacker-sized slugger with high-fives while urging him to give a speech. House music blared as Hedges and Gaddis argued over whether the catcher’s recent stolen base should have been deemed defensive indifference. Kwan walked past Noel, hopped and punched the air, mimicking the team’s Super Mario-themed home run celebration. Ramírez stepped onto the edge of his locker in his brown Louis Vuitton loafers to answer reporters’ questions and meet Clase’s gaze.
“You can tell when people genuinely, actually want to be around each other,” Vogt says.
Manager Stephen Vogt (left) and bench coach Craig Albernaz don’t often vary their pregame routine. (Jason Miller / Getty Images)
One hour before first pitch, Vogt and Albernaz reunite in the manager’s office, down the hall from the clubhouse nuttiness and last-minute plotting. They say goodnight to their kids over FaceTime. They review Albernaz’s notes on the running game, the pitching matchups, pinch-hit scenarios and bullpen deployment. They toast to the night ahead and take a swig of Arctic Vibe-flavored Celsius. The routine can’t change — and neither can the drink flavor — unless they lost the night before.
“We’re a little ‘stitious,” Albernaz says.
Fifteen minutes before the national anthem, Vogt darts to the dugout. He has arrived at the calmest part of his day. The empty dugout is his oasis.
His days are filled with organizational meetings and media interviews and office visits and strategizing sessions. His late nights are spent stirring in bed, sometimes until 3 a.m. as he mentally replays decisions or contemplates advice to supply a struggling player. It takes an episode or two of “Banshee” to hush the inner monologue.
As the game inches closer, though, he finds clarity. He leans against the dugout railing and, for 15 minutes or so, he can exhale.
He watches fans find their seats. He initiates off-topic banter with players as they pass by on their way to stretch. He cycles through his memories from whichever ballpark he’s calling home for a few days. He can’t patrol the visitors dugout in Kansas City without reflecting on the 2014 Wild Card Game with Oakland.
He calls this “the calm before the storm,” a therapeutic reset before the real thing, far away from Ramírez’s toneless melody, Hedges’ ceaseless banter and any other noise.
By this point, the hard work is complete. It’s time for first pitch.
(Illustration: Dan Goldfarb / The Athletic. Photos: Jason Miller, Rich Storry / Getty)
Justin Fields and Caleb Williams will be forever linked.
The Chicago Bears selected Fields in the first round in 2021. He would go on to spend the first three years of his NFL career in Chicago. This past March, that same franchise decided to trade Fields to the Pittsburgh Steelers in exchange for a conditional sixth-round draft pick in 2025. Just over a month later, the Bears used the first overall draft pick on Williams.
Fields experienced his fair share of ups and downs throughout his 40-game tenure with the Bears, but he has seemed to have found his footing with the Steelers. Super Bowl champion Russell Wilson was named the starter heading into the 2024 regular season, but he was scratched from Pittsburgh’s season opener against the Atlanta Falcons due to a hamstring injury.
Justin Fields of the Pittsburgh Steelers looks on after beating the Broncos at Empower Field at Mile High on Sept. 15, 2024, in Denver. (Justin Edmonds/Getty Images)
Fields helped lift the Steelers to an 18-10 victory over the Falcons in Atlanta. Last week, Fields threw one touchdown and avoided turning the ball over in a game against the Denver Broncos to help Pittsburgh improve to 2-0 on the season.
STEELERS STICKING WITH JUSTIN FIELDS AT QB OVER INJURED RUSSELL WILSON FOR WEEK 3
Meanwhile, Williams’ final stat line after his NFL debut was largely forgettable. The Bears scored 24 points, which was enough to defeat the Tennessee Titans, but Williams finished the day with just 93 passing yards and no touchdowns.
Williams delivered another pedestrian performance on Sunday night as the Bears suffered a 19-13 loss to 2023 NFL Offensive Rookie of the Year C.J. Stroud and the Houston Texans.
Chicago Bears quarterback Caleb Williams heads off the field following an NFL football game against the Texans on Sunday, Sept. 15, 2024, in Houston. (AP Photo/Eric Gay)
Fields dealt with similar issues during his stint with the Bears. While Matt Nagy was the head coach during Fields’ rookie campaign, much of the Bears’ current regime, which is led by Matt Eberflus, was in place when the 25-year-old signal-caller was in Chicago.
Fields worked under a couple of different offensive coordinators during his run in the Windy City, but Eberflus’ approach to the offense appeared to largely remain the same. Eberflus elected to bring in Shane Waldron from the Seahawks to help guide Williams this season, but the results through the first pair of games have been underwhelming.
Fields can certainly relate to what Williams is going through, and he told Fox News Digital that he believes the Heisman Trophy winner will ultimately recover from the slow start.
“I think he’s going to be fine,” Fields said when asked about how Williams will fare as the season progresses. “It’s his second game. He just got done playing. He’s talented, he has all the talent in the world. They drafted him No. 1 overall for a reason.
“Of course, it’s just not him, but he’s going to get most of the blame just because of the position he’s in,” he continued. “But just as a whole … the guys over there I know … they want to be better, and I think they’re going to be better. So, I’m hoping that they start getting [the things] done on offense that they need to do.
“[Caleb] played two pretty good defenses coming out, so I think he’ll be fine.”
Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Justin Fields (2) runs against Broncos defensive end Zach Allen (99) during the first half of an NFL football game, Sunday, Sept. 15, 2024, in Denver. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski)
Fields spoke to Fox News Digital on behalf of Reebok. This month, the NFL star teamed up with Reebok for the new Justin Fields collection.
The collaboration introduces a training shoe called the Nano X4, a running shoe, the FloatZig 1, and a youth-sized shoe known as the Zig Dynamica 2.0. Every shoe in the collection features the mantra “Evening the Playing Fields” in the sock liner.
“It’s an honor to launch the Justin Fields Collection with Reebok and continue our shared mission of supporting the next generation of athletes,” Fields said. “The collection is designed to pay homage to my roots and the community around me.”
NFL quarterback Justin Fields’ Reebok footwear capsule titled “Reebok x Justin Fields” launched on Sept. 12. (Reebok)
Fields was named “Mr. Georgia football” during his standout high school football career. He went on to commit to the Bulldogs. But after experiencing limited playing time during his freshman season, he transferred to Ohio State. He went on to lead the Buckeyes to an appearance in the 2021 College Football Playoff National Championship game.
At just 25 years old, Fields has experienced quite a lot in his football career. He said his faith and his family help keep him grounded.
“God, to be honest, because I’ve seen how he’s worked in my life in those moments,” Fields told Fox News Digital when he reflected on changing schools and joining a new NFL team. “Just in life for anybody, we all come up with ideas in our heads of how we want certain things to play out, and that might not always be God’s will. He [does] things in a different way, and it turns out better than you could ever imagine.
“So, just trusting in him each and every day and also my family, really just the people who support me. Because I just know how God has put me on this platform to just inspire others … other people see what I’ve been through, so I just try and be a good role because at the end of the day we’re all going through something.”
Fields and the Steelers welcome the undefeated Los Angeles Chargers to Acrisure Stadium on Sept. 22 for Pittsburgh’s regular-season home opener.
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If you’ve watched the Sparks this season, their home finale went about exactly as you might have expected.
The Sparks got off to a hot start, building an advantage on the boards that led to a noticeable 12-2 margin in second-chance points as they took an eight-point lead into halftime. Then, an absolutely horrid third-quarter stretch snowballed as the Phoenix Mercury came roaring back to defeat the Sparks 85-81, handing them their eighth consecutive loss, tying a franchise record to close out their home schedule.
“It was that snowball effect again that we’ve talked about,” Sparks head coach Curt Miller said. “The offensive inefficiency, the offensive turnovers, a tough shooting night snowballed to where we lost some of our defensive focus and defensive intensity.”
After a back-and-forth first quarter, the Sparks opened the second quarter on a 10-2 run to take control of the game thanks in large part to strong performances off the bench from Li Yueru and Zia Cooke, whose nine points each tied Dearica Hamby for the team lead at the half. Rickea Jackson was starting to find her groove in the second half as well, getting to the line and shooting a perfect four for four on her free throws.
“I’m really appreciative of my coaching staff and all my teammates. They try to help me every game and every practice,” said Yueru, who had her first career double-double with career highs in both points (19) and rebounds (12). “I feel I really grew up.”
The Sparks were in full control of the game, with Brittney Griner the only Mercury player with more than five points (14) in the first half. But the mood shifted in the final seconds before halftime when Griner threw an elbow at Jackson, who took exception. They got in each other’s faces and exchanged shoves. After a lengthy official review, double technical fouls were handed out and Jackson and Griner were ejected from the game.
Almost as if on cue, things began to unravel for the Sparks once the second half was underway. The Mercury got off to a quick 10-2 run of their own to erase the Sparks lead, and finished the quarter on a 9-4 run to push it to double digits. In Griner’s absence, it was 20-year veteran Diana Taurasi (13 points, three rebounds, five assists), Sophie Cunningham (14 points, three rebounds, two assists), and Natasha Cloud (13 points, 12 assists) who stepped up to lead the Mercury.
“To Phoenix’s credit, they made it ugly,” Miller said. “They played a lot of zone, they scrambled around and pressed without BG. I thought we were on our heels immediately in the third quarter, got a little tentative against the zone. I didn’t think that first unit shared the ball particularly well.”
Miller in his postgame comments praised Taurasi as one of the greatest to ever play the game, referring to her as one of the torch-bearers of the WNBA.
“I don’t know if that truly is Diana’s last regular season road game, but she has meant so much to this league,” he said. “She continues to play at an extremely high level. … The GOAT gets tossed around a lot in sports these days, but truly one of the best to ever do it. And the longevity that she’s done it at is truly remarkable.”
Meanwhile, nothing went the Sparks’ way in the third quarter. They had eight turnovers, which matched their total in the first half. In total, they gave up 31 points off 20 turnovers, as both the ball and the game continued to slip away.
After the final buzzer sounded, sealing the defeat and an abysmal 5-15 home record this season, Azura Stevens took a minute to address the crowd at Crypto.com Arena.
“I can promise you that each and every one of us will be in the gym this offseason and we’re going to get better,” Stevens said. “Mark my words, next year is going to be different.”
On Jan. 11, Texas quarterback Quinn Ewers posted a video to more than 200,000 followers on Instagram. In it, he signed a trading card with his face and added a message below.
“I’m coming back,” he wrote, holding the card up to the camera.
The top comment on the post?
“Yall gonna lose manning (sic),” it read, adding a pair of laughing emojis aimed at the Longhorns’ predicted misfortunes.
Manning, as in Arch Manning: five-star recruit, and the son of Cooper, nephew of Eli and Peyton and grandson of Archie. Ewers’ surprising decision was about chasing Texas’ first national title since 2005, but the commenter wasn’t alone in directing attention to college football’s most famous backup in an era in which there is no penalty for transferring.
Even before Ewers elected to return, Manning faced questions at the Sugar Bowl about whether he wanted to leave after barely seeing the field in his first season.
“It’s tough because you want to be out there playing with your boys,” Manning told The Athletic in July. “But just realizing there’s nowhere else I want to be, and it was my dream to play at Texas. I’m going to stick it out and play there eventually,”
GO DEEPER
Arch Manning and other QBs explain decision to transfer or stay put
He made the same decision as Ewers: He was coming back. He was always coming back. Now, Manning is likely to make his first career start against Louisiana-Monroe on Saturday, as Texas coach Steve Sarkisian said Ewers is questionable to play after straining his oblique against UTSA.
“Arch is just another guy on our team, and the reason I’m able to do that is because that’s who Arch is every day,” Sarkisian said Monday. “He’s the selfless teammate. He cares about the guys on the team. He cares about Quinn. They’ve got a great relationship. He works his tail off. He wants to play good football for them because he knows how hard everybody’s working.
“So I literally don’t address it with him. I don’t address it with the team. He’s just part of the team.”
Arch Manning threw for 223 yards and had five total TDs versus UTSA. (Tim Warner / Getty Images)
There was a time when quarterbacks seeing the field before their second or third year was an anomaly. Now, it’s an expectation, at least for five-star prospects. When Manning’s name never appeared in the transfer portal, he bucked a decade of trends among college quarterbacks.
Transfer portal decisions are unique to every player, but as Manning enters what is expected to be his first start, we’re seeing the reasons why leaving would introduce more questions than answers and present more problems than solutions.
Though Manning has thrown only 23 passes in four appearances since arriving in 2023, things have largely gone according to plan at Texas — even if winning the starting job was delayed by a year because of Ewers’ return. Manning is still one good season away from crystallizing his status as a first-round draft pick, and he has plenty of time to do it, with three years of eligibility remaining after this season. His path to the field became clearer when last year’s backup, Maalik Murphy, transferred to Duke, and another year working behind Ewers was only going to make the results better once it was time for his turn in the spotlight.
His growing pains have mostly been able to come in closed practices. They haven’t had to come in nationally televised games like young quarterbacks who are asked to be saviors like freshmen Dylan Raiola at Nebraska and DJ Lagway at Florida. But when he has been given the opportunity, he’s excelled. On Saturday, thrust into extended duty against an overmatched UTSA team, he threw a touchdown pass on his first attempt, scooted past a safety for a 67-yard touchdown run and finished with three more touchdown passes in a 56-7 blowout win.
GO DEEPER
With Quinn Ewers injured, Arch Manning tallies five TDs vs. UTSA
Now, if he starts Saturday, he’ll do it for a Texas team ranked No. 1 in the AP poll for the first time since 2008, when Colt McCoy was under center for the Longhorns. McCoy, by the way, didn’t play his first season at Texas either.
Since high school, everything the Mannings have done with Arch points to a big-picture approach, aiming for a lengthy NFL career, not the quickest path to the playing field or the best way to earn money from his fame in college. Manning’s recruitment was straight out of 1995: If you don’t have DMs, reporters and coaches can’t slide into them, and it’s easier for coaches and parents to control coaches’ access to you, too.
He’s a non-factor on social media. He barely spoke to reporters about his college decision, a family strategy borne out of a desire to allow him to live a more normal high school life. His family background affords him the ability to shrug off the obligations of chasing NIL money, as does his status as a likely NFL Draft pick after he does get on the field.
GO DEEPER
Arch Manning’s unique approach to recruiting
Now, his decision to stay patient in college is old-school, too. NIL money is the invisible hand guiding players into and out of the transfer portal, but the success that his family has enjoyed means money was never going to influence his decision. As of last December, his only NIL deal was an exclusive trading card partnership with Panini America, despite erroneous reports that he was earning millions as Texas’ third-string quarterback. After initially declining to be included, he elected to opt into his name, image and likeness being used in EA Sports’ College Football 25.
Manning has done little to nothing to “grow his brand” and yet the brand he was born with has made him one of the five biggest names in college football.
Ewers returned to Texas with national title aspirations in Texas’ first season in the SEC after reaching the College Football Playoff a season ago and narrowly losing to Washington in the semifinals. His faith in Sarkisian and the team returning to Austin has thus far been rewarded, and Manning saw the same thing.
If the program had been on shakier ground entering the SEC, it stands to reason Manning might have entertained entering the portal. But Texas is as strong as it’s been since the heyday of Mack Brown in the 2000s. Why would Manning leave and adjust to new coaches, a new play caller, a new offense and a new head coach for what would almost certainly be a worse team?
And there’s the uncomfortable reality that Ewers, who could be the first quarterback taken in the 2025 NFL Draft, has been one of the more injury-prone QBs in college football, even as he’s developed into one of the best. When he strained his oblique Saturday, he did it as the betting favorite for the Heisman Trophy. In 2022, he missed a shade under four games after injuring his shoulder in a close loss to Alabama. In 2023, he missed two Big 12 games with a sprained AC joint in his shoulder. Texas turned to Murphy to keep its Big 12 and national title hopes on track and survived an upset bid from Kansas State while Ewers healed.
Now, Ewers is injured again, and Manning looked like America’s best backup quarterback in relief against UTSA.
Regardless of Ewers’ readiness to play, handing Manning the keys for a game against ULM in which Texas is favored by 45 points is the prudent decision. The next two opponents, Louisiana-Monroe and Mississippi State, are unlikely to test the Longhorns, and Ewers seems likely to return by the time the national championship pressures increase when Texas’ date with Oklahoma in the Red River Showdown arrives on Oct. 12 before Georgia comes to town on Oct. 19.
When Ewers stayed for one more unexpected year in Austin, it was easy to expect Manning to act like every other quarterback and develop a drifting eye to find a new program. But Manning leaving Texas never made sense. His college football experience is not like every other quarterback’s.
Why wouldn’t his decision-making be different?
(Top illustration: Dan Goldfarb / The Athletic; photos: Eric Gay / Associated Press; Tim Warner / Getty Images)
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