Miami Marlins GM Kim Ng’s journey to the postseason
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Xuan Thai, ESPN Senior Writer
MIAMI — Down a brightly lit hallway that leads to a section of luxury suites at the Miami Marlins‘ stadium, where each room is filled with fans cheering on the home team, the door to the last suite is closed. Inside sits Kim Ng. No entourage, no buddies from college, no staff checking in. With a laptop, an iPad and a water bottle, the Marlins’ general manager sits with the lights off, watching the game alone.
It’s just before the MLB All-Star break, and second baseman Luis Arraez is chasing a .400 batting average, a feat not accomplished at the July break since 1999. It was Ng who traded for Arraez in her first full season without Derek Jeter in the Marlins’ front office. Already, there are whispers that the team could reach its first full-season postseason in 20 years.
I walk into the suite and attempt to break the ice, recounting a quote attributed to Ng’s mother about the “return on investment” of a University of Chicago degree and Ng’s decision to take an unpaid internship with an MLB team. I can relate. I tell her how my father once asked about the “cost-benefit analysis” of my decision to stop practicing law to take an unpaid internship at a cable news network. Aren’t Asian parents funny that way, I ask? She kindly laughs, perhaps more out of courtesy than comedy. I quickly pivot to baseball.
Ng’s journey to this place has been well chronicled — more than 30 years of management and executive experience that includes stints with MLB, the Chicago White Sox, Los Angeles Dodgers, and the New York Yankees, with whom she won three World Series. She’s often included on those “most powerful women in sports” lists, and has grown accustomed to answering the inevitable questions about the “first” and “only” career labels — the first and only woman hired as general manager of a men’s major pro sports team in North America, the first East Asian American to do it in baseball.
It can be lonely being the first and only, and it’s clear those are things she doesn’t like to discuss. Less than three years into her first GM job, she’d much rather talk about baseball, the team and the “culture of winning” she’s trying to cultivate — to focus on anything other than her own story. It’s hard to break through. Over the course of several interviews this past regular season, Ng sticks to her talking points.
When we meet again three months later, with just six games left in the regular season, Ng is once again having a first-and-only moment. This time she’s in a Citi Field box for visiting general managers, and the Marlins are in close pursuit of a National League wild-card spot. Winning a series against the New York Mets would feel particularly fitting for the GM who grew up playing stickball on the streets of Queens. But it also could help Ng become the first and only female GM to lead a team to the postseason.
To be on the brink of a playoff spot is an accomplishment for any GM. For Ng, who is cautious by nature, this requires focus.
“It definitely hit me around the All-Star break when the team was sitting in a very good position,” she says. “Now we’re down to the last week and it’s starting to hit again, that you’re realizing that you’re just in a great position to do things that you’ve wanted to do for a really long time, and that is get to the postseason. And I’ve been there before with some of my other clubs, but certainly not in this chair. And that obviously makes this different.”
She says she’s tried to avoid feeling stress up to this point.
“Now,” she says, “I’m allowing myself to stress a little bit.”
This is a big admission. She knows that her reactions could affect the rest of the organization, and wants to keep things positive in the clubhouse.
“For a while,” she says, “I was playing the same playlist over and over, as I went into work every day and I was playing it in my suite each night during the game. Probably just to divert my attention from being so stressed.”
I ask, “What’s on this playlist?”
“Oh, yeah,” she says, laughing, “You’re not getting that out of me!”
After opening the second half of the season on an eight-game losing streak, the Marlins dipped below .500 in late August and appeared headed for another disappointing end. But series wins against the Washington Nationals, the Dodgers and Philadelphia Phillies, plus a sweep of the Atlanta Braves, helped them finish 84-77 in the regular season. They clinched a wild-card spot with a win Saturday in Pittsburgh, where Ng joined the celebration on the field.
The Marlins are playoff-bound in a full season for the first time since 2003, when they went on to beat the New York Yankees in the World Series. (The Marlins reached the playoffs during the pandemic-shortened postseason in 2020.) They open play Tuesday at Philadelphia (8 p.m. ET on ESPN).
For Ng, who is 54, getting to this historic moment started in 1990, three years before the Marlins became an expansion team. She’d graduated from the University of Chicago and joined the Chicago White Sox as an intern. The White Sox hired her full-time the next year and by 1995 had promoted her to assistant director of baseball operations. When she became an assistant GM of the Yankees in 1998, she was the second youngest person ever in that role at the time.
It would take another two decades for her to land a GM job. Publicly, she remained upbeat when asked about that. She’s joked that she was always a bridesmaid. Today, she acknowledges that some of those GM interviews were more performative than purposeful.
I ask how she dealt with the frustration, how she kept going after a half dozen or so attempts to advance.
She says she’s been asked that question often, and that the answer has been, and will always be, “What am I supposed to do, quit?”
“You just keep trying,” she says. “And it was incredibly frustrating, there’s no doubt about that. But you just keep at it.”
Joe Torre, who worked with Ng during their time with the Yankees and Dodgers and was her boss in the MLB offices, is more blunt, saying some of those teams just “checked a box.”
“I just think that they just never wanted to pull the trigger. Nobody had the courage to do it,” Torre says. “There’d be teams that would call me about interviewing her. And I said, ‘It’s all well and good, but just don’t do it just to cover your ass. I mean, you have to be serious.'”
After years of disappointments for her, another former Yankee, Derek Jeter, made the move. As chief executive and a minority owner of the Marlins, Jeter was known as an advocate for diversity in baseball. Jeter, who declined an ESPN interview request, called Torre when the Marlins first considered Ng for the job.
“[Jeter] had called me about her, and the one thing he said to me because he knows, he said, ‘Just tell Kim I’m not checking a box here. I’m seriously interested in her ability to do this job,'” Torre recalls.
The Marlins named her GM in November 2020.
“When she came in, she inherited almost the entirety of the front office,” says longtime Marlins assistant GM Brian Chattin. “She kind of walked into already an organizational dynamic that had been operating for a few years, which is challenging to do, to come in the leadership role and inherit everyone.”
There were no wholesale firings of front-office staff during Ng’s first two seasons. Ng reported to Jeter, who reported to majority owner Bruce Sherman. The executives in place were largely Jeter’s team, and like Ng, several were former Yankees.
According to some with knowledge of her time with the Marlins, many of the people she worked with continued to look to Jeter for guidance or approval. Ng had one position she could fill in her first months — team travel director. A year later, in January 2022, she brought in her first big hire, Stan Conte, as senior director of medical services. They’d worked together in Los Angeles, and his job was to overhaul the Marlins’ medical unit.
When Ng first approached Conte, who resigned as the Dodgers’ vice president of medical services in 2015, he was living in Arizona with no intention of returning to baseball full-time. As Conte recalls it, he was less than enthusiastic when Ng called.
“I said, ‘No, I don’t want to help. I want to be retired,'” Conte recalls.
He says Ng wasn’t having it. Eventually, he relented.
“This is part of her personality,” Conte says. “She’s very politely in a lot of different ways, wears you down and you don’t even know it’s happening. She isn’t who you think she is, and she does that on purpose. She’s methodical, attentive and deliberate.”
When Jeter left the Marlins in February 2022, again there were no wholesale firings of front office staff, but positions did open up and Ng took the opportunity to make methodical and deliberate moves. To create what she calls “the culture of winning.”
Longtime manager and former Yankees great Don Mattingly left after the 2022 season. The opening allowed Ng to bring in first-time manager Skip Schumaker, who at the time was a bench coach for the St. Louis Cardinals. A major league player for 11 seasons, Schumaker won a World Series with the Cardinals in 2011.
“She definitely took a chance on me, that’s for sure, being a rookie manager. I’m grateful for that,” Schumaker says. “I think she did a really good job of acquiring a staff that also knows what winning looks like and holds people accountable.”
She brought in another assistant GM, Oz Ocampo, from the Houston Astros. Ocampo is known for his expertise in scouting international talent. He was instrumental in bringing in key players to help the Astros win three World Series.
During the interview process, Ocampo says, he needed to figure out whether the Marlins were as committed to winning as he was.
“The history of the Marlins was that they would win and then they would disband the team and then they would be followed by long periods of losing,” he says. “And I don’t tolerate losing very well, and neither does Kim and neither does Skip.”
She also took hold of key player decisions. After trading for Arraez before the start of the 2023 season, she was criticized by some observers for sacrificing too much talent to acquire the hitter. This season, Arraez chased .400 for half the season and has become a driving force on the team.
Before the Aug. 1 trade deadline, Ng knew what the team needed. Those in the room recall the day in awe.
“The trade deadline this year, unbelievable. I was in that room all day long from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. and everyone had different opinions, but she knew exactly what she wanted,” Conte says. “What she needed was runs, and she went out and scouted the right people and got them.”
She brought in infielders Josh Bell and Jake Burger. Perhaps just as important, she let go of those in the organization who were not on board with her vision. One of those was Gary Denbo, vice president of player development and an early Jeter hire.
But she also kept people who were put in place before her, and gave everyone a chance to prove themselves. Mel Stottlemyre Jr. has been the team’s pitching coach since 2018. He is one of the few coaches to stay through the changes.
Junior, as he is called by those who know him well, always suspected Ng would become a GM. His father — the late Mel Stottlemyre, a legendary pitcher and coach — told him she would some day.
“I remember when my pops was alive and still working with the Yankees,” Stottlemyre Jr. says. “He mentioned Ng’s name to me, and he talked about the toughness within her. And he finished his conversation and said that this woman was going to be a GM.
“And for him to say that, and then for me to go to work for her in what is her first job?” Stottlemyre Jr. points to goosebumps on his arm.
“Full circle,” I add. He nods. We let it sink in.
I bring up that moment with Ng. She pauses, too.
“When Mel told me the story, it surprised me because I definitely was not there making my mark,” she says. “That wasn’t my personality either, but it was certainly humbling to hear it for sure.”
Not yet three years into being a GM, Ng’s impact on baseball remains undeniable. At an MLB “Take the Field” event, a program designed to promote women working in baseball this past December, Ng gave the keynote address.
“Kim walks up and [my friends] are like, ‘Oh my gosh, that’s Kim! That’s Kim!'” says Jennifer Brann, a 25-year-old Marlins data analyst whose friends were eager for an introduction. “People see her as like a larger-than-life figure. I think that she’s more popular than some of the [players] sometimes.”
Ng is aware she’s a role model, which also kept her going through all those GM interviews over the years.
Over the course of our interviews, I’m almost apologetic for asking what it means to be a woman in baseball. It is the year 2023, after all. But Ng is a woman and Asian American, like me, and those facts still matter. Visibility matters.
“Given my understanding of where I was in the universe, and that a lot of people looked up to me, whether it was women in the industry or young women wanting to get in the industry,” she explains. “You just never wanted to just fade off into nowhere. That wasn’t really an option.”
When Burger joined the team in August, his younger sister, Ellie Burger, retweeted a post the third baseman shared in November 2020, celebrating Ng’s historic hire. He tweeted that his sister, who always wanted to be a GM, now saw it was possible for a woman to have the top job. I asked Ellie what Ng’s role as GM means to her.
“It was just kind of breathtaking and wow, it actually happened.” Ellie says. “It was at like 52 [years old] she got hired as GM, and you take a Theo Epstein, for example, who gets hired at 28. And it’s like, why is there this difference? This is long overdue, but finally there’s movement.”
Eve Rosenbaum, a former MLB intern who worked for Ng and is now an assistant GM with the Baltimore Orioles, says Ng has huge weight on her shoulders.
“I think once one team hired a woman and then everyone can sort of exhale and say, ‘OK. Oh look, it happens,'” Rosenbaum says. “And, ‘Oh, look, she’s doing a good job,’ and then everyone else feels more comfortable to be the next person to hire a woman to lead their baseball ops department.”
Still, Ng is somewhat surprised to hear that her colleagues describe her as collaborative, kind, deliberative and smart.
“That’s the external, but the internal is quite a bit different,” Ng says. “It’s interesting that that’s the way they perceive me.”
“What’s the internal?” I ask.
“Very competitive, doesn’t quit,” Ng says, reflecting on her journey, but adding she wonders whether she “should let my personality come out a little more.”
Ng can be guarded about what she says, and careful about how she presents. But the few who know her well say she is fiery, too.
“It would annoy me when writers would ask [if I wanted to be GM]. Because are you asking the guys that? If you’re not asking the guys that, then don’t ask me that,” Ng says, slightly agitated. She rarely gets animated during our interviews. “[Are you asking] because I shouldn’t have that ambition, or it would be odd if I did have that ambition?”
It’s early September, and on this day, I’m back in Ng’s box at the Marlins’ stadium, in the dark, watching what is undeniably a sloppy game. The Marlins are losing badly to the Dodgers. Suddenly, a ball boy mistakes a ball in fair play for a foul ball and costs the Marlins a run. I react in disbelief. Ng is silent.
“Do you wish the game was already over?” I ask.
“Yeah, like five innings ago,” she says wryly.
In nearly every interview with Ng and those in the organization, the phrase “culture of winning” appears. Shortly after sitting down next to her, she says she wants to revisit the “culture of winning” idea again. She doesn’t think she explained it very well the last time we spoke.
“The culture of winning means the process and the preparation,” Ng explains. She then goes into detail about playing smarter baseball. Surprisingly, she says this night’s 10-0 rout by the Dodgers is not disappointing.
“This is execution. And sometimes you just don’t execute,” she says. “Physical mistakes happen. But last year, we might’ve thrown to a wrong base. That is not acceptable. That’s a mental mistake. That’s the mistake you have to learn from.
“We’ve been much better this year. And those are the signs of improvement and building that foundation.”
Sports
Breaking down Aaron Judge’s early playoff performance: A productive start or another October disappointment?
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Kiley McDaniel
In case you hadn’t heard, Aaron Judge entered the 2025 MLB playoffs with a checkered history of October results compared with his stellar regular-season résumé.
For his career, Judge’s OPS is 250 points lower in the postseason than in the regular season (the average regular-season-to-playoff OPS dropoff for hitters in 2024 was 18 points), and his struggles on the biggest stage have become a talking point nearly every October.
After his .184/.344/.408 slash line during the Yankees’ 2024 postseason run, Judge is hitting objectively well in the playoffs this year — posting a 1.024 OPS and collecting an MLB-leading eight hits in his first five games. But he isn’t hitting for much power, with just one extra-base hit (a double) in 21 plate appearances, and his team enters Game 3 of the American League Division Series on the brink of elimination.
As the Yankees try to battle back against the Toronto Blue Jays, we dug deep into each of Judge’s first 18 at-bats (and three walks) to see what we can learn about his October so far.
How is Judge being pitched in the playoffs? Is it different from the regular season? Why isn’t he hitting for power? Is it bad luck? And where could his postseason go from here — if the Yankees can stick around long enough for him to find his home run stroke?
How left-handed pitchers are approaching Judge
Judge vs. lefties in playoff career: 42 PA, .400/.500/.714, 19% K, 17% BB, 3 HR
Judge vs. lefties this postseason: 8 PA, .500/.500/1.125, 13% K, 0% BB, 0 HR
Each pitcher has different strengths, but there are some clear trends that lefties are following when attacking Judge this month.
The game plan goes something like this: throw hard stuff (four-seam fastballs, sinkers, cutters) on his hands, largely down, then mix in softer stuff to keep him honest, locating those pitches down and on the corners — where he is least likely to do damage. If you miss, miss outside of the zone, not toward the middle. Don’t be afraid to nibble around the outside of the zone and live to fight another day.
That’s a solid plan against almost any hitter, but in this case, it means going hard inside against a 6-foot-7 slugger whose relative weaknesses will always include covering the plate against good stuff.
It’s telling that the two softer-throwing lefties Judge faced (Boston’s Connelly Early and Toronto’s Justin Bruihl) threw two fastballs out of their 10 total pitches and both missed off the plate inside, one missing so far inside that it hit Judge. Garrett Crochet, Aroldis Chapman, and Brendon Little were much more aggressive, likely because of their better fastballs.
How right-handed pitchers are approaching Judge
Judge vs. righties in playoff career: 241 PA, .192/.304/.409, 34% K, 13% BB, 13 HR
Judge vs. righties this postseason: 13 PA, .400/.538/.400, 23% K, 15% BB, 0 HR
Judge has faced eight different righties this postseason, and those pitchers vary vastly in their pitch mix and the quality of their stuff, but right-handed pitchers seem to be using a decision tree to craft their game plan against him.
If the righty’s top offspeed pitch is a breaking ball (slider, sweeper, curve) then he is throwing that as often as he can while locating it down and away — and mixing it with fastballs inside to keep Judge from leaning over the plate. Here’s a look at Judge vs. breaking balls only.
If the righty’s top secondary pitch is a splitter — such as Toronto’s Kevin Gausman and Trey Yesavage in the first two games of the ALDS — then he is mixing splitters and sliders away with some fastballs that are mostly targeted inside.
But no matter their style, one common goal for all of these pitchers is not to make a mistake over the plate!
How does Judge’s regular-season history factor into this plan?
Though Judge’s October struggles have become a narrative over his career, any team setting up its pitching strategy for a series will game plan for the two-time American League MVP with a career 1.028 OPS and 368 home runs rather than treating him like the player with a .223 average and .787 OPS in 63 career playoff games.
And that starts with keeping the ball away from where Judge can do the most damage.
During the 2025 regular season, Judge faced 176 pitches (essentially one pitch every four plate appearances) that qualified as in the middle-middle zone — or, in more general speak, right down the middle.
Against those pitches, Judge had a 1.630 OPS and 15 homers, both figures were second best in baseball.
This is where Judge ranked, among all qualified hitters in MLB this season, measured by xwOBA:
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Second best vs. middle-middle pitches
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Best vs. pitches in the heart of the zone (a larger part of the strike zone than middle-middle)
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Best per pitch vs. fastballs, second in overall value
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Best per pitch and overall vs. sinkers
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Best per pitch and overall vs. cutters
Imagine getting this scouting report as a pitcher before you face Judge in a playoff game. I wouldn’t throw him anything down the middle, either.
How Judge is handling pitches he should crush
Now for the twist: Judge has faced seven pitches in the playoffs that were in the middle-middle zone (one pitch every three plate appearances, so slightly more frequently than the regular season).
So far this postseason, Judge hasn’t put one of those pitches in play. He swung at five — fouled off four and whiffed at another — and took two middle-middle pitches for strikes.
This isn’t a trend I tried to identify in my research because the small sample means one home run on a center-cut ball would poke a hole in it, but in watching all of his playoff at-bats, I made too many of this sort of note: “target was [zone direction] corner, missed target to the middle of the zone, [nothing bad happened to the pitcher].”
So, yes, it’s a small sample, but October baseball is won and lost on small samples. Judge is getting pitched roughly how he was in the regular season (actually even a bit more hitter-friendly), but he hasn’t replicated his regular-season damage, especially when it comes to punishing mistakes thrown down the middle. Judge has performed basically the same (chase rate, xwOBA, etc.) as the regular season against noncenter-cut pitches, so not taking advantage of these mistakes is accounting for his dip in power in the playoffs this year.
Over 162 games, anyone putting up an OPS over 1.000 is having a very productive season — even if it’s all coming from singles and a few doubles — but the heat has been turned up with the Yankees facing elimination, and the offense needs to deliver, with Judge at the heart of it. This team needs Judge to punish mistakes and create some souvenirs or he is at risk of having another October disappointment added to his résumé.
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Adam Rittenberg
ARCH MANNING HAS been taunted and has clapped back. The Texas quarterback has been booed by road and home fans alike, and has also brought snippets of joy to those wearing Burnt Orange, but not enough for his or their liking.
Longhorns coach Steve Sarkisian has noted the “out of control” expectations placed upon the third-year player, and last month responded to a question about Manning grimacing after a throw by speculating about the bathroom faces of reporters. The whole Arch thing has been intense, exhausting and, at times, weird.
And we’re only five games into this season.
“He throws a bad pass, he’s the worst quarterback in the world, he throws a good pass, he’s gonna win the Heisman,” an SEC coordinator said. “Like, goodness gracious, just let the kid play for a little bit.”
The first chunk of game action has provided a legitimate sample size to truly evaluate Manning, which really didn’t exist before. He only made two starts in 2024, against a Group of 5 opponent (UTSA) and an SEC bottom-feeder (Mississippi State), and saw little time as a change-of-pace quarterback behind Quinn Ewers during Texas’ run to the conference title game and the College Football Playoff semifinal. While coaches set to face Manning this fall acknowledged his talent and potential, they qualified their assessments by noting his lack of meaningful playing time.
Now, there’s something to truly judge. Through five games, Manning has completed 60% of his passes for 1,158 yards with 11 touchdowns and five interceptions, while adding a team-high 160 rushing yards and five touchdowns for a ground game that ranks 55th nationally in rushing. He has had tough games, namely the opener at Ohio State, where Texas did not score until the final minutes, and an 11-of-25 passing performance against a UTEP team that now sits at 1-4. Manning showcased a mix of promise and frustrating moments in Saturday’s 29-21 loss at Florida, finishing with 263 yards on 55.2% completions with two touchdowns and two interceptions. He also led Texas with 37 rushing yards.
The general view of Manning, both within and outside the program, is that his outlook remains promising despite some clear bumps, which are common for new starting quarterbacks. “Just going through it man,” a Texas source said of Manning, echoing how many are viewing his first month-plus as QB1 for the Longhorns. While he hasn’t met the elevated expectations placed on him, coaches still think he has all the ingredients to shine in the long run.
“When you’re the quarterback of the Dallas Cowboys or the University of Texas, you’re one of the most scrutinized people in the world,” said a coach who faced Texas this season. “I just truly believe that that kid is going to be fine, if mentally he can weather the storm of the media and all these things.
“He’s a [five-game] starter and getting his wings under him.”
There are also other factors involved, including a supporting cast on offense that has dealt with injuries and underachievement. Manning undoubtedly needs some refinement, too, especially in areas like footwork, and will be tested again this week as Texas faces rival Oklahoma in the Allstate Red River Rivalry at the Cotton Bowl. Oklahoma coach Brent Venables has made a career out of tormenting inexperienced quarterbacks, and he will get his first crack at Manning, who didn’t face the Sooners this past season.
“For Arch, it’s continue to be him,” Sarkisian said last week. “That’s one of the things that we’ve been harping on here. As much as the attention swirls around him, he doesn’t have to play to that attention, whether it’s positive, negative, whatever it may be. Focus on his teammates, focus on what he needs to do to prepare, focus on having fun, playing football.
“That’s when he’s at his best.”
DAVID MORRIS HAS known Arch Manning his entire life and has trained him since the fifth grade. Morris backed up Manning’s uncle, Eli, at Ole Miss, and is best friends with Eli and close to the family.
He also has a global view of the quarterback position as the founder of QB Country, a quarterback training and development program.
“The first season, and particularly the first half of the first season, when you’re a starter, there’s a natural progression, it just takes a little time to get to playing your best football,” Morris said, adding of Arch Manning, “He’s on the right track, and I’m excited for him.”
Morris noted how even Eli Manning had a bumpy start to his career as an NFL starter. Although some first-year starters immediately excel, an adjustment period almost always follows before they grasp the demands of playing quarterback at a high level.
Trevor Lawrence helped Clemson to a national title after taking over the starting job midway through the year in 2018, but he began his first full season as QB1 by throwing five interceptions in the first three games of the 2019 season.
Manning’s first start of the season, at an Ohio State team with a new-look defensive front, under the direction of new coordinator Matt Patricia, was far from perfect. He was 0-for-5 with an interception on passes of longer than 5 yards during the first three quarters before a nice surge in the fourth. He finished with an off-target percentage of 37%, the worst by a Texas quarterback during the past decade, per ESPN Research.
But Ohio State has turned out to be dominant defensively throughout the first portion of the season, leading the FBS in the fewest points allowed (5 points per game).
“You couldn’t have a much more challenging game than the Ohio State on the road opener for a first-time starter,” Florida coach Billy Napier said before facing Texas.
Manning’s other road start came against Napier’s defense that, despite the team’s 2-3 record, is allowing just 17 PPG.
“People expect these miracle things from these [first-year starting] quarterbacks,” said an opposing defensive coordinator. “Very few can do that. He doesn’t have game experience yet. He looks like a tough kid.”
Sarkisian on Monday said Manning “fought his ass off” in the Florida game.
Arch Manning benefits from having been around the quarterback position since birth. He has direct access to his uncles, Eli and Peyton, and grandfather, Archie, who all played quarterback on the biggest stages. He also can lean on Morris and the in-season coaching from Sarkisian and AJ Milwee, who has coached Texas’ quarterbacks since 2021.
Morris lists several qualities that jump out about Arch Manning, describing him as “a whole athlete” who “historically, can make a lot happen in small spaces.” Manning has good instincts, both within the pocket and in extending it. Coaches highlighted Manning’s athleticism this past season, and those who have faced him or scouted him this fall point out how effective he is on the move, even when his passing has fluctuated.
At 6-foot-4 and 219 pounds, Manning has had at least one run of 14 yards or longer in four of five contests.
“Hard as hell to tackle,” an opposing coach said. “They will have a chance to win a lot of games because if he ain’t beating you with his arm, Sark does a great job with the zone-read and the designed quarterback runs. His feet and his size give him all the ability in the world, so he can beat you in a number of ways.”
MANNING HAS BEEN under the brightest spotlight from the moment Texas lost in the CFP semifinal. That’s what happens with highly anticipated new starting quarterbacks, especially one named Manning.
But has there been enough attention paid to who is surrounding him? Texas had two offensive players selected in the first round of April’s NFL draft, left tackle Kelvin Banks Jr. (No. 9) and wide receiver Matthew Golden (No. 23), who led the team with 987 receiving yards and nine touchdowns this past season. The Longhorns also lost Gunnar Helm, a fourth-round draft pick and one of the nation’s most productive tight ends with a team-high 60 catches for 786 yards and seven scores. Texas said goodbye to No. 2 wide receiver Isaiah Bond and Jaydon Blue, the team’s second-leading rusher, who went in the fifth round.
One of the nation’s best offensive lines saw three players drafted and another land a free agent deal, with right guard DJ Campbell as the lone returning starter. The new-look line has had clear struggles, especially in Saturday’s loss at Florida, which sacked Manning six times and hurried him 10 times. Texas’ offensive line pressure rate is 40.9%, the worst in the SEC and 124th in the FBS. Last year, the Longhorns’ line ranked 15th in the FBS at 27%.
Texas seemingly made a spring portal splash by adding Cal tight end transfer Jack Endries, who led the Bears with 623 receiving yards on 56 receptions in 2024. But Endries has only nine receptions for 108 yards and two touchdowns through five games at Texas.
“I was expecting more,” said a coach who scouted Texas. “People are looking at Texas, like: ‘Where did they put their money?’ They’re a good team, but it wasn’t like, ‘Oh my gosh,’ like some of the better Ohio State teams.”
A defensive coordinator who faced Texas noted that sophomore wide receiver Ryan Wingo is “kind of freakish.”
“They’ve got some good guys around [Manning], good tight ends, but they haven’t really seemed to really click on all cylinders,” the coach said.
Although Texas brought back leading rusher Quintrevion Wisner, he sustained a hamstring injury in the opener at Ohio State and had only 11 yards on eight carries in the Florida loss. CJ Baxter, who missed all this past season with a knee injury, was hurt on Sept. 13 during the first play against UTEP and has not returned.
“It’s kind of like running back by committee with them right now. The receivers are just OK,” an opposing coach said. “That, to me, is the bigger story. I don’t think the pieces around him are elite.”
“The biggest difference is the surrounding cast,” Napier said of Texas before their game. “Not only is [Manning] a new starter, but there’s a lot of players on that side of the ball who are playing in that system for the first time.”
The sense within the program is that Manning will be more fairly judged once the team gets healthier at both running back and wide receiver. Stanford transfer Emmett Mosley V, who had 525 receiving yards and six touchdowns in just nine games as a true freshman this past fall, made his Longhorns debut against Florida and had two catches for 40 yards after being limited with a lower-leg injury since his arrival this summer.
“He’s going to play better,” a Texas source said of Manning, “but everybody around him has got to play better too. The quarterback should get a little help. It doesn’t have to all be on him.”
A HEALTHIER GROUP of backs and receivers will help Manning, but he also must continue to make strides and overcome some of the problems that surfaced in the first few games.
He ranks 119th nationally in catchable pass rate (71.9%) and 128th in third-down conversion percentage on pass plays (19.4%). Perhaps most alarming: Manning is 130th in percentage of off-target passes (17.9%).
“The throws he missed, I’ve seen him on tape the previous year make way harder throws,” said a coach who scouted Manning. “He’s just putting so much pressure on himself. There are three or four hitches or out-cuts that he overstrides and just panics and rips it and goes in the dirt or is inaccurate. His feet are everywhere.”
Footwork is the area several coaches cited that Manning must finetune and should with more starts under his belt. Although Manning has the arm strength to make throws from several different slots, which is increasingly more common, he “throws it a little more sidearm than I thought,” said a coach who scouted Manning.
“It led to some inaccuracies,” the coach said. “I don’t know if he’s trying to be cute, having that whipping motion. That just didn’t look natural to me.”
Manning clearly has some areas to sort out, but also is capable of delivering, as he showed by avoiding the rush from Florida’s Tyreak Sapp and launching a 38-yard touchdown to Wingo.
“I think he’ll be good,” said a defensive coordinator who faced Texas. “He sees pictures, he does a good job extending plays. He’s still young, really hasn’t started a bunch of games. He’s been there, but it’s his fifth game starting.”
Those around him think he has the mental toughness to make corrections, even amid constant scrutiny.
“The kid’s a rock mentally,” said a source close to the program. “They raised him to be a quarterback.”
Texas ultimately needs Manning to be a better quarterback — and lead a better offense — to salvage a season that began with a No. 1 ranking and talk of a national championship and a Heisman Trophy. Any further stumbles likely would mean the Longhorns would miss the CFP for the first time since 2022.
The challenge is magnified this week against No. 6 Oklahoma, which leads the FBS in the fewest yards allowed by more than 10 per game (193 YPG) and ranks second in fewest passing yards allowed (118.4 YPG). The Sooners have already terrorized Michigan freshman quarterback Bryce Underwood (9-of-24, 142 yards). Venables’ scheme is known for making things particularly hard on first-year starting QBs.
“There’s always going to be growing pains,” Sarkisian said last week. “Whether you get those growing pains early, in the middle, late, whatever. … In the end, it’s kind of like, ‘Well, I’d much rather have those growing pains early than later.’ And we got ’em, and now he can get back to being the player he wants to be and is capable of being.”
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