Arch Manning Graded As College Football's Best QB in Week 5

Arch Mannings Manning's grade following the 35-13 win over Mississippi State is the highest among power-four quarterbacks this season.

Texas Longhorns quarterback Arch Manning (16) lines up for a snap during the game against Mississippi State at Darrell K Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium in Austin Saturday, Sept. 28, 2024. / Aaron E. Martinez/American-Statesman / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

In his second career start, Arch Manning helped elevate the Texas Longhorns to their fifth win of the season and their first in SEC play.

The quarterback attacked the Mississippi State defense with a 26-31 completion rate, 324 yards and two touchdowns. Manning also added a touchdown on the ground to go with 33 yards on six rushing attempts.

With that, Pro Football Focus (PFF) announced on Monday that Manning's performance was ranked as the highest-graded performance for power four quarterbacks in Week 5 with a 94.2 grade. (out of 100) grade.

The 94.2 grade is not only the highest grade for power-four quarterbacks in week 5 but also the highest grade of the entire season.

The only quarterback to have as high as Manning's PFF grade this year throughout all of FBS would be Navy's QB Blake Horvath with a 94.2 grade in week 4 when the Midshipmen beat the Memphis Tigers 56-44.

In that game, Horvath only threw 12 passes, but completed nine of them for 192 yards and two touchdowns.

Impressive, but hard to argue that a 94.2 grade would be much harder to achieve with 31 passes thrown instead of 12.

"There were some nice, nice plays made by him, especially on some third down conversions," Texas head coach Steve Sarkisian said. "He really responded coming off of last week's game. And what a luxury to have a player of his caliber as our backup quarterback."

Manning will more than likely go back to the backup role following this week's bye due to Quinn Ewers predicted to be ready for the Red River Showdown.

But regardless, Manning's performance in the three games since Ewers went down was spectacular and he showed the pure potential the backup has to be a very talented field general.