On Saturday afternoon, the Texas football program improved to 6-2 with an impressive overtime road win over the Mississippi State Bulldogs. Texas found itself trailing by 17 points in this game in the second half, but ultimately, quarterback Arch Manning and the team's talented array of supporting weapons were able to do enough to storm back and send the game into overtime, where they hung on for the win.
Unfortunately, the team didn't make it out of this game unscathed from an injury perspective, as Manning went down with an injury in overtime, and the latest update that Texas got on Monday was not an encouraging one.
“Arch Manning is in concussion protocol and did not practice on Monday, per Steve Sarkisian at his presser in Austin,” reported college football insider Pete Nakos of On3 Sports on X, formerly Twitter.
“Troy transfer Matthew Caldwell is in line to start if Arch Manning can't go against Vanderbilt,” he added.
Manning has been up and down so far this year but had begun to start putting some things together lately, including in the fourth quarter of the win against Mississippi State. Losing him for any amount of time at this crucial time of the year could spell bad things for the Longhorns moving forward.
In most years, a game against Vanderbilt may not seem like the worst matchup to be without your starting quarterback for, but that certainly isn't the case this year, as Vanderbilt has already picked up three Top 25 wins on the season, including their recent home victory over Missouri, and currently sit at number nine in the latest edition of the rankings.
In any case, Texas and Vanderbilt are set to kick things off on Sunday at 12:00 PM ET from Austin. Texas will certainly hope that Manning is out of the protocol by that point.
