With an unforgettable moment inside Tiger Stadium, Texas quarterback Arch Manning delivered late-game heroics that will never be forgotten in Longhorns football history.
4-yard touchdown pass from Manning to Raleek Brown on a dart to the boundary with three seconds left lifted sixth-ranked Texas to a 22-21 victory over No. 21 LSUnegating Lane Kiffin and the Tigers’ chance of reaching the College Football Playoff this season.
After trailing 21-10 midway through the third quarter, the Longhorns scored 12 unanswered points the rest of the game to move closer to a first-round home game or a potential top-four seed in the CFP.
“We talked about having a chance to end someone else’s dream, and I like to focus on us, but it feels good sometimes,” Manning said after his fifth win this season against an opponent currently ranked in the top 25 in the CFP.
Manning performed near perfection in the final moments, overcoming a three-interception outing with a couple of critical third-down conversions after Texas began its winning possession at its own 42-yard line trailing by five points with 2:19 to play.
“It means the world,” Manning said. “I would point out to some of my teammates where I sat at those games growing up. So just to come home and do it in the last seconds, that’s a memory I’ll have for the rest of my life.”
It marked a homecoming of sorts for Manning in Louisiana, who played prep football at Isidore Newman in New Orleans as the nation’s No. 1 recruit in the 2023 cycle. Television cameras showed Manning trotting toward his father, Cooper, after the game, where the first row of seats begins just beyond the end zone, and sharing a quick hug.
“It hadn’t been great all night; I thought it was time to do it,” Manning said. “I grew up with a lot of LSU fans. So it’s going to feel good to come back for Mardi Gras, or to come back every time I come home (to New Orleans), and not let them talk shit.”
Kiffin laments disappointing first season
At 6-4 overall and likely outside the third CFP rankings Tuesday night after another loss, LSU’s path to an at-large appearance in the 12-team bracket is crushed.
Despite spending more money than any national program on transfer portal acquisitions from the nation’s top-rated class, the Tigers largely failed to deliver during the season’s biggest moments. LSU doesn’t have a ranked win and now needs to win just to get one of the SEC’s upper-tier bowl destinations.
None of the playoff talk is important without a CFP spot.
“I understand,” Kiffin said after the game. “The underperformance doesn’t matter if the game was close or if it went down to the last seconds, it doesn’t matter, six seconds. We were brought here to win, and we have to win more than that. Now, also, not everything is built for the first year when you get somewhere, and I would tell you that if we were undefeated right now. You build things, and that takes a little time.”
Kiffin said he wasn’t “overreacting” to LSU’s fourth loss and understands his program was on the brink this fall despite execution failures.
“I’m worried that we lost. I’m not worried about the future,” Kiffin said. “I said weeks before, when we were winning, that we would have better rosters. And that’s not a bad reflection on these players. We will. We will have been here. We will have built depth. We won’t have senior days with two scholarship players.”
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