ARCH, HORNS ROLL FOR TEN IN 2025

Arch Manning, with his Texas team’s slick 41-27 thumping of Michigan in the 2025 Citrus Bowl, joined a rather august herd of Longhorn quarterbacks in the history book.
It’s the list of UT signal-callers who have bossed a team to double-digit wins as a starter.  Manning did it in high style, too, passing for more than 200 yards and two scores plus sprinting for TDs of 60 and 23 yards.  Arch’s stat line showed 155 yards rushing on just nine carries.
Sure, you can say that a ten-win season no longer guarantees trophies, laurels, statues or even Pop-Tarts gift cards.  But ten wins still signifies a measure of success, much like hitting .300 or rushing for 1,000 yards.  And it beats hell out of nine wins.
Manning said after the game that he wants — with no disrespect intended — no more of the Citrus Bowl.  Because it ain’t part of the CFB Playoff’s bowl lineup.  He and the ’26 Horns are aiming higher.
Arch would certainly like to become the first QB-In-Burnt-Orange to lead his Texas team to 16 wins (or 17, if they don’t get a first-round bye) next season.
Meanwhile, welcome to the club, Arch.  You’re in good company among the likes of James Street, VY, Colt McCoy, and your old “sensai,” Quinn Ewers, now the Miami Dolphins starting QB. The beyond legendary Bobby Layne played for the first two University of Texas football teams to earn ten wins, in 1945 and 1947.  But he missed the first six games of ’45, serving with the Merchant Marine.  In spite of missing half the season, Layne made the All-Southwest Conference team.  To ring in the new year of ’46, he accounted for every UT point in the team’s 40-27 Cotton Bowl victory against Missouri.  Layne scored two TDs, threw for two, caught a 50-yard scoring pass and kicked four PAT’s.  That “run, throw and catch a TD” trick was duplicated by Manning in Austin against outmatched Arkansas last November.

Layne got his ten wins as a starter in ’47, his senior year.  The future NFL Hall of Famer led Texas to a 10-1 record, including a Sugar Bowl win over Alabama.  A missed extra point in a 14-13 loss to SMU denied Texas a perfect season.

Texas didn’t win ten-out-of-eleven again until 1961, when Mike Cotten directed the Steers to Darrell Royal’s first bowl victory at Texas, a 12-7 upset of Ole Miss.

Two years later, Duke Carlisle, a key DB from the ’61 unit, was the man under for UT’s first national champs.  He seldom threw as a Longhorn but Carlisle surprised number two Navy — and Heisman winner Roger Staubach — with TD passes of 58 and 64 yards to Phil Harris in a glorious, 28-6 sinking of the Midshipmen.  With Texas’s first eleven-win season, Carlisle, naturally, became the first Texas QB to start for eleven wins in a season.

The burnt orange chalked up ten wins in 64, a season that saw UT beat Bama and Joe Willie Namath in the first night-time Orange Bowl, and also saw Texas miss a perfect season by yet another 14-13 SWC loss.  

This one came against Arkansas after a failed two-point conversion pass late in the midseason rivalry game.  But no QB got credit for ten wins as a starter.  Junior signal caller Marvin Kristynik was 9-1 as a starter.  He relieved Jim Hudson in one early game, when Hudson (1-0) was injured on UT’s first scoring drive.  
Ironically, both QBs figured prominently in the Orange Bowl “W.”  Kristynik guided Texas most of the way.  Hudson, though, tossed a 69-yard scoring bomb to George Sauer, Jr, in the 21-17 “Moon Over Miami” win.  And both Hudson and Sauer, along with TE Pete Lammons and DT John Elliott, would team with Namath four years down the road, to earn what still ranks as the biggest Super Bowl upset.  Jets 16, Colts 7.

James Street, who ought to be honored with a DKR-Texas Memorial Stadium statue, won 20-out-of-20 as UT’s signal caller from October ’68 through Jan. 1, 1970.

The ’68 season meant nine wins.  In college football’s centennial season of ’69, Street was absolute money, especially clutch in late heroics that beat Arkansas, 15-14, then Notre Dame in high cotton, 21-17.

The back-up to Street in ’69 was Eddie Phillips, a sophomore from Mesquite.  He got plenty of reps in blowouts.  Come September 1970, Phillips was ready as top gun.  

Under his guidance Texas went 10-0 — extending a mind-boggling win streak to 30 — and putting Eddie on the ten-win list.  Even in defeat, in a Cotton Bowl redux versus Notre Dame, Phillips was brilliant, setting a total offense record for the bowl and winning offensive MVP honors.

It would be “a minute” before the Forty Acres again celebrated any back-to-back ten-win seasons.   Royal’s last six squads managed double-digit wins in ’72, with All-SWC QB Alan Lowry switching into All-QB mode, and in ’75, with senior Marty Akins in charge, as DKR’s only three-year starter at quarterback.

Curiously, not one of Akers’ quarterbacks during the ’77-’86 seasons reached the double-digit win mark, even though Akers ‘teams produced double-digit victories three times.

Injuries were part of the reason.  Mark McBath started for Texas in the first four W’s of ’77.  When an injury knocked McBath and backup Jon Aune out for the year in the first half of the OU fight, Randy McEachern took the reins.  McEachern had a successful season, meriting second team All-SWC honors in spite of starting just five league games.  Freshman Sam Ansley went 2-0 when Randy hurt a knee in November.

Akers ’81 season spawned the rise of former walk-on Robert Brewer.  Rick McIvor, a junior, led the offense through October but injured a shoulder in a duel with Houston.  Brewer led UT back to achieve a tie, then won out as the starter the rest of the autumn.  He finished the storybook season as Offensive MVP of the Cotton Bowl.  The Horns trailed third-ranked Alabama, 10-0, in the fourth quarter, but Brewer scored on a 30-yard draw and piloted Texas to another score and a 14-12 victory, Akers’s lone Cotton Bowl win in three tries.
Brewer would pace the Horns in a 9-2 ’82 year, then missed the Sun Bowl because of an injury.  He remains UT’s lone walk-on-turned starting quarterback.

Versatile (he was a QB, RB and return man at UT) Rob Moerschell went 9-0 as QB for the ’83 Longhorns.  Todd Dodge also started as a reward for rallying Texas from off the bench, and Rick McIvor was the next hero off the bench in the regular season finale.  The second-ranked Horns trailed 13-0 against the 5-4-1 Aggies when McIvor’s number was dialed in the second quarter.  He threw four TD passes and Texas cruised to 42 unanswered points, icing a perfect 11-0 regular season that would be marred by a quirky, 10-9, Cotton Bowl loss to Georgia.

The Longhorns wouldn’t even sniff ten wins in the last six seasons of the decade.  But then came the remarkable 1990 team, rolling along in the Coach McWilliams “Shock The Nation” tour.  

Peter Gardere is a member of the 10-win-in-a-season club.

Texas had turned in back-to-back losing seasons for the first time in the modern era.  But the Steers beat Penn State on the road to start the season, lost a close one to Colorado, then steamrolled through the Southwest Conference behind sophomore QB Peter Gardere. In October, he earned his second “W” in the Texas-OU series with late heroics.  “Peter The Great” would, of course, lead the Horns to wins again in ’91 and ’92 and reigns as the rivalry’s only 4-0 starting QB from either side of the Red River.

Go ahead and call 1995 the “I Feel Good” tour.  Every broadcaster seemed to pull that dusty music reference out weekly while James Brown played for four years as UT’s QB1.  He guided UT to three bowl games, including the Sugar and Fiesta, but the ’95 season, his sophomore year, was the sole season with double-digit triumphs.

James Brown is a member of the 10-win-in-a-season club

New Jerseyite Chris Simms is rarely recalled as a beloved figure in Longhorn football lore.  The intrasquad quarterback rivalry with fan favorite and certified gamer Major Applewhite saw to that.  But Simms became UT’s first starting quarterback to be at the helm for ten Texas wins in two years.  Sure, you can put an asterisk on that mark, if you want to, the way baseball commish Ford Frick did when Roger Maris’s ’61 Yankees played eight more games than did the ’27 Yanks of Babe Ruth.  Texas was in position to play an extra game — the Big XII title game — each year, boosting chances for a double-digit win chart.  But Texas hadn’t done it under Brown or Applewhite.

Chris Simms is a member of the two 10 plus wins in a season clubs

Ironically, the only conference title game Simms played in brought infamy, not another win.  He had four first-half turnovers when  Texas (10-1)  faced Colorado — a team they had beaten earlier — for the 2001 crown.  Applewhite brought UT back to the brink of a magnificent comeback win, then was named the starter for the final game of his career, the Holiday Bowl versus Washington.  The freckle-faced quarterbackin’ assassin, nicknamed “Opie” by teammates, ignited a late resurgence that erased a 19-point Husky lead.  It ended in a wild, 47-43 Texas win.  Applewhite, who had rewritten UT’s passing record book as a freshman and sophomore, punched up one more record: 473 passing yards in a game.  It still stands.

But back to Simms.  The strapping, straw-haired lefty was entirely in control after Major graduated.  And he was very productive as a senior in 2002, passing for 3207 yards and 26 TDs, as Texas, with losses only to OU and Texas Tech, finished 11-2, closing with a Cotton Bowl championship win over LSU.

Vince Young is a member of two 10 plus wins in a season clubs

Simms’ status as the only Longhorn QB with two seasons of double-digit wins did not last long. A slippery, elusive cat named Vince Young soon hit Austin. He shared starts and “dubs” with Chance Mock in ’03 when UT won ten and lost three.

But then Vince finished out his Texas career — he was 30-2 a starter — with two Rose Bowl titles and a national championship, as UT finished 11-1 and 13-0, respectively, in 2004 and 2005.

Similarly, VY’s marks, at least regarding ten-win years, were rubbed out in a hurry. A teen named Daniel “Colt” McCoy was an afterthought as a clipboard carrier in ’05. Then he ascended to the most pressurized position in the Lone Star State. Born in New Mexico, son of a coach, most recently of Tuscola in West Texas, McCoy would initially face competition from blue-chipper Jevan Snead. But McCoy started all 53 games of a decorated career, setting the NCAA mark (Kellen Moore would soon scratch it) of 45 victories as a D-I starter at QB. In McCoy’s years, Texas carved out ten wins in each of the ’06 and ’07 seasons. They then amped it up to a 12-1 mark in ’08 and a 13-1 record as Big XII champs and national championship finalists, when McCoy said ‘adios’ after but five plays against Alabama due to a shoulder injury.

*McCoy went 45–8 in 53 career starts, and he is the only QB in NCAA history to win 10+ games in four seasons.

Texas football endured its own version of a Great Depression-Dust Bowl combination for almost a decade after McCoy’s departure. But after an eight-year absence from ten-win heroics, UT resurfaced with a late surge in 2018, capped by an upset win over Georgia in the Sugar Bowl in New Orleans. Sophomore Sam Ehlinger was the Big Man On Campus at the Forty Acres. He would, in fact, go 4-0 as a bowl starter under Tom Herman, a Longhorn record.

In the ’18 season Sam and his teammates hit the double-digit club.

You know the rest. Coach Steve Sarkisian came on board in ’21, weathered an ugly inaugural season, righted the ship with an 8-5 year, then got things on track. In years three and four in Austin, QB Quinn Ewers directed the Longhorns to two national semi-final appearances.

Ewers was bothered by injuries in both seasons. But despite giving way to Maalik Murphy for two starts in ’23 and to Manning for two more in ’24, Quinn piloted UT to 10 of its 12 wins in 2023, then to 11 of the Horns’ 13 victories in 2024.

Now, for the first time since Colt McCoy was the law in Austin, UT has a gunslinger in Arch Manning (well, two) around to uphold law, order and double-digit W’s for three straight years. And the goal for ’26 extends far beyond ten victories for Texas.

Is it almost September? Ohio State will come a-callin’. Arch Madness looms again.

General Longhorn Quarterback Information

Texas has chalked up 27 seasons of ten or more wins. Fourteen individuals have piloted the Horns to ten wins as QB1, over 21 seasons. Six more ten-win years saw a sharing of the starts and wins at quarterback. Colt McCoy led UT to at least ten victories in each of his four varsity years. Quinn Ewers, Vince Young and Chris Simms each guided the burnt orange to at least ten wins twice.

The ten-or-more wins as starters and seasons:  
1947:  Bobby Layne     1961:  Mike Cotten     1963: Duke Carlisle    1969:  James Street
1970:  Eddie Phillips    1972:  Alan Lowry       1975: Marty Akins         1990: Peter Gardere
1995:  James Brown     2001*, 2002:  Chris Simms      2004, 2005:  Vince Young
2006-2009:  Colt McCoy     2018: Sam Ehlinger     2023**, 2024***:  Quinn Ewers: 2025 Arch Manning

* Simms was 10-2 as starter.  Major Applewhite was 1-0. **  Ewers was 10-2 as starter.  Maalik Murphy was 2-0. *** Ewers was 11-3 as starter.  Arch Manning was 2-0.

( TLSN’s Larry Carlson is a member of The Football Writers Association of America. He teaches sports media at Texas State University and lives in San Antonio. Write to him at lc13@txstate.edu )

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