When the Texas Longhorns lost to Ohio State in the 2025 Goodyear Cotton Bowl, junior quarterback Quinn Ewers likely played his last game in a Texas jersey. After much debate about his future and speculation about his entry into the transfer portal, Ewers announced his decision.

When ESPN’s Pete Thamel asked him if he planned to play college football next season, he simply replied, “No, I don’t.”

This means Quinn Ewers’ days in Austin are over and redshirt freshman Arch Manning will be the University of Texas’ next starting quarterback. Ewers wore the title well, finishing his Longhorn career with 8,845 passing yards, 66 passing touchdowns, eight rushing touchdowns and 23 interceptions and reaching two consecutive conference championship games and the semifinals of the College Football Playoff.

Manning is the future of Texas football.

His family insisted he wait his turn to play for head coach Steve Sarkisian, and now he will get his chance. This season, Manning played three complete games, starting one after Ewers’ injury and starting two games thereafter. In 10 games, he threw for 939 yards and nine touchdowns while also running for 100 yards and four touchdowns.

Longhorn fans who were dissatisfied with Ewers’ performance wanted to see more from Manning despite a solid performance from Ewers in almost every game this season.

But Ewers deserves his flowers.

Ewers has the longest active touchdown pass streak of any NCAA quarterback at 26 games and is the first Texas quarterback since Colt McCoy to lead the Longhorns to back-to-back 10-win seasons.

He took the Texas program to places many Longhorn quarterback greats could never take their teams.

And that means something.

“You know, at the beginning of the season, nobody really thought we would be here,” Ewers said after the loss to his former team. “Our first year in the SEC, we made it to the SEC title game. That didn’t work out the way we wanted either, but it was really cool to see us bounce back the way we did throughout the season. “I’m beyond proud of all these guys, I love everyone Each of them, you know how much work we put into the off-season, winter conditioning, summer training, all of that, we work together and the love grows together. It was just a really cool season and I’m so proud to be a Longhorn.

Although the loss to Ohio State will continue to haunt Texas fans for a while, the future of the Texas Longhorns football team is as bright as ever. Manning is the third generation of great quarterbacks, with both his uncles and grandfather being NFL Hall of Fame members.

And that will make Austin an exciting place to watch football for some time.

However, what Ewers did for the Texas program was pretty exciting in itself and should not be forgotten.

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