Arch Manning reignited rampant speculation about his NFL future — specifically whether he plans to enter the NFL Draft after this upcoming season or the 2027 edition– when he recently pushed back against his grandfather, Archie Manning, suggesting the Texas quarterback will return to Austin for the 2026 college football season. “Yeah I don’t know […]
Arch Manning reignited rampant speculation about his NFL future — specifically whether he plans to enter the NFL Draft after this upcoming season or the 2027 edition– when he recently pushed back against his grandfather, Archie Manning, suggesting the Texas quarterback will return to Austin for the 2026 college football season.
“Yeah I don’t know where he got that from,” Manning said earlier this week. “He texted me and apologized about that. I’m really just taking it day by day right now.”
ESPN’s Field Yates took that knowledge and ran with it, placing the youngest Manning as his projected No. 1 overall pick to the Cleveland Browns in his 2026 NFL Draft Mock 1.0 released Wednesday morning. But during ESPN’s “First Draft: Field Yates’ Mock Draft 1.0” episode later Wednesday on ESPN2, longtime ESPN draft analyst Mel Kiper Jr. took immediate exception.
“What about Shedeur (Sanders)? That’s my thing,” Kiper Jr. said. “If Shedeur was the fifth pick in the (2025 NFL) Draft instead of the fifth-round pick that he was, would we be saying it was a bad pick? We’d be saying nothing was wrong with that fifth pick overall being Shedeur Sanders, based on the way he’s looked in training camp — right after the draft, through training camp, and in that first preseason game. Obviously he was injured and didn’t play this past week.
“The bottom line is, what do they feel about Shedeur and Dillon Gabriel, who they picked a few rounds earlier after coming out of three different programs — UCF, Oklahoma and Oregon. And he’s had a decent camp. So when you look at Shedeur and Dillon Gabriel, hand-picked by Kevin Stefanski and GM Andrew Berry, right? So they’re guys that they picked. It doesn’t matter it wasn’t in the first round. If they would’ve been (selected) in the first round, I don’t think you’d be sitting here saying Cleveland is taking Arch Manning, correct?”
Field Yates: Quarterback ‘would be a slam-dunk’ if Browns have No. 1 overall pick
Yates agreed, but argued where Cleveland selected both Gabriel and Sanders does matter.
“Correct. If they’d gone in the first round, (the Browns) would not (be taking Manning in my mock). But, to me, that’s everything here. It means everything,” Yates countered. “Because if they’re picking first overall this upcoming draft, it means they probably went 3-14, 4-13, and that suggests neither of those players have established themselves as the clear and obvious solution (at QB). And given that they were third- and fifth-round picks, on — by quarterback standards — pennies-level contracts, the finances, the investments, and the reality of being 3-14 or 4-13 and the oppontunity cost, leads me to believe that a quarterback (at No. 1 overall) would be a slam-dunk for Cleveland.”
Kiper then turned Yates’ own words against him, pointing out even the NFL’s best quarterbacks take more than a single season to establish themselves as franchise QBs.
“The only problem I have with that is that ‘clear and obvious solution’ and it’s hard to really determine that after Year 1,” Kiper said. “Patrick Mahomes didn’t even play his first year, won one game at the end of the year. So, … are you going to know that (after one season)? Is it going to be like Jayden Daniels, where you know that after Year 1? … We’re still wondering about some of those guys that went high two or three years ago. We don’t know what they’re going to be.”
Of course, all this is still speculation about an event that’s still eight months away from happening. In the meantime, Manning will lead No. 1 Texas against No. 3 Ohio State in their much-anticipated 2025 season-opener Aug. 30 from Columbus, Ohio. The rest remains up for debate.
Category: Football
