The Texas Longhorns social media team offered some insight into quarterback Arch Manning at practice, releasing two and a half minutes of footage on Thursday with the redshirt junior mic’d up.
Here are three takeaways from the footage:
Manning calls perfect passes “butter”
Practice footage released by the school is typically anodyne enough to avoid providing too much insight into the team — acquiring knowledge from the clips usually requires careful observation.
This practice footage, however, reveals something new about Manning — when he drops a perfect pass into the hands of a wide receiver, the catch phrase he calls out is “butter,” or, on one occasion, “butterscotch.”
So when Manning starts delivering big-time throws to Cam Coleman or Ryan Wingo or Emmett Mosley this season, fans may be inclined to call out “butter” from the stands or towards their television.
Cam Coleman works on difficult catches
Although last week’s viral one-handed catch by the Auburn transfer came on a tipped pass, it appears that spectacular catches of that variety might be commonplace in Texas practices as quarterbacks coach AJ Milwee asked, “Where is this ball going to be if we throw it right? Up high.”
Manning complied, delivering the type of ball that only Coleman would be able to come down with in a game even if he was covered well. Coleman responded with another incredible one-handed catch.
Coleman’s ability to create separation is one of the skills that sets such a high ceiling for him, but this play in practice reveals that the quarterback and wide receiver are intentionally developing the chemistry for Manning to throw Coleman open against sticky coverage.
A flash from Ryan Wingo
Landing a clear WR1 in the portal was such a pressing need for Texas over the offseason because Ryan Wingo failed to develop into that player for the Longhorns last season, in large part because of shaky hands and an inability to consistently come down with contested catches — Wingo had a team-high seven drops last season, four more than any other wide receiver, and only came down with four contested catches on 14 opportunities.
So it was encouraging to see a clip of Wingo extending outside of his body to make a difficult catch in practice.
But it is just a single flash, and Wingo often seemed more comfortable in those situations last season and less comfortable making easier catches that nonetheless required looking the ball all the way into his hands and finishing the play before looking to pick up yards after the catch.
