Cooper Manning opens up on the advice he gave his son Arch this season

When you're a Manning, the expectations for how you'll perform are automatically sky high. Having that famous last name means you'll inevitably have a brighter spotlight shined upon as well. It has been this way for him since early high school. At the start of 2026 NFL mock draft season (it basically began in May of 2025), Arch Manning was the early consensus favorite to go #1 overall.

Most mock drafts had him at the top, and the hype machine kicked in to overdrive during football talking season. Manning was destined to win the Heisman trophy, lead the Texas Longhorns to the national title, and then become the #1 overall pick in the next spring's NFL Draft.

None of those things happened, as it was actually Indiana quarterback Fernando Mendoza who achieved the first two things, and he has a great chance of accomplishing the third, come April.

Manning's season got off to a rough start, and he had some ups and downs as the campaign went along, but ultimately, the trajectory was most certainly positive. He didn't live up to the hype, because doing so would have meant having a season that looked like Mendoza's.

Speculation mounted on whether Manning would return to school, or enter the draft. One person called it, back before the season even kicked off, his grandfather Archie Manning. The second pick in the 1971 NFL Draft and a New Orleans Saints Hall of Famer was right. That's because, no matter who you are, family knows you better than anyone else.  

Which brings us to Archie's son and Arch's Dad, Cooper Manning. He perfectly understood the progress that his son made with the Longhorns this season.

“You have to go through those ups and downs to have experience, and that’s the only way you get better,” Cooper said in an exclusive with RG.org. “Trying to be less robotic and just get to where it’s natural — where you’re not thinking about everything, you’re just playing.

"That’s when you could tell that kind of kicked in in the second half of the year, and it was certainly more fun to watch.”

Manning completed 61.4% of his passes last season for 3,163 yards, 26 TDs and 7 INTs; good for a passer rating of 144.9 and a QBR of 78.0. He tossed 15 TDs against just two interceptions across his final eight games of the season. Arch led the Horns to a 10-3 record and a trio of wins over opponents ranked in the top ten.

He also guided Texas to a nice win over Michigan in the Citrus Bowl.

“I know it was more fun to run around and be there,” Cooper said in the same interview, of Arch's developing as the season went on. “Kind of like anything, as you go through it a little bit to get there. While that can be lumpy and kind of challenging, it’s probably better for you in the long run. Hopefully there’s more fun to be had.”

And after a stellar season like that, expectations will rise again, for both him and his team, in 2026. Given how 2025 went, he should be able to handle it, during his senior season, just fine.

This article originally appeared on Draft Wire: Cooper Manning discussed his son Arch staying in school another year