Can you name the QB's with the most interceptions in the CFP era? Quiz clue: INTs / Years / School(s). Good luck!
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The media overhyped Texas quarterback Arch Manning ahead of the 2025 season, and now the media is tearing him down. To be fair, the redshirt sophomore has struggled for much of this campaign, but so has the Longhorns program as a whole. On Tuesday, in a piece for The Athletic, Will Leitch wrote in part, "Arch Manning, so far, is a flop." That seems overly harsh and at least a little unfair. Arch Manning has an opportunity to change the narrative The annual Red River Rivalry game, which began in 1900, is coming up. It's an opportunity for Manning to show the college football world that he's a quality quarterback. This Saturday afternoon, No. 6 Oklahoma (5-0) will travel to Cotton Bowl Stadium in Dallas to face the Longhorns (3-2), a team that resided at No. 1 in the preseason AP Top-25 poll but dropped out of the poll altogether after a Week 6 road loss to Florida, 29-21. For as bad as this season has been for Texas to date, the Longhorns have two losses. They were both on the road by a combined 15 points to a desperate Gators squad and to Ohio State, which is the No. 1 team in the country. Plus, Manning's subpar play isn't the only reason that the Longhorns are 3-2 and need to rattle off a ton of wins in the remainder of the regular season to have any shot at making the 12-team College Football Playoff. Other members of the Texas offense have struggled, too, and the program has had to deal with some injuries. Calling Arch Manning a "flop" is a bit over the top The 6-foot-4, 219-pound Manning, who hails from New Orleans, is completing 60 percent of his passes for 1,151 yards with 11 touchdowns and five interceptions. He's also rushed for 160 yards and five more scores on the ground. Those aren't mind-boggling numbers, but they're not awful, either. The challenge for Manning is that he comes from a famous football family. Ahead of 2025, he was named by the media as a preseason All-American, a Heisman Trophy favorite and a potential No. 1 overall pick in next year's NFL Draft despite this campaign being his first as a full-time starter. The Sooners' Heisman Trophy candidate, redshirt junior quarterback John Mateer, is trying to return for the game at Texas after having surgery to address a right-hand injury in September. Manning hasn't lived up to the preseason hype — yet. He's also not a flop. If he can outperform Mateer and give Oklahoma its first loss on Saturday, that would be massive for Manning's confidence and give Texas a little momentum heading into the second half of the regular season.
The Jacksonville Jaguars ended their 16-year losing streak to the Kansas City Chiefs on Monday night after a thrilling 31-28 victory at EverBank Stadium. Trevor Lawrence turned in another strong performance to help lead the Jaguars to victory with 18-of-25 completed passes for 221 yards and one touchdown. It wasn’t all good news for the Jaguars, though, who improved to 4-1 after taking down Patrick Mahomes and the mighty Chiefs. They lost starting tight end Brenton Strange in the first half after the former Penn State Nittany Lions star suffered a hip injury. Strange was unable to return to the game, and tests have determined a significant quad issue for the 24-year-old. The Jaguars took to social media on Tuesday to announce that Strange has been placed on injured reserve (IR), which means he will be forced to miss at least four games due to his hip problem. “The Jacksonville Jaguars have made the following roster moves: Placed TE Brenton Strange on injured reserve Signed WR Tim Jones to the practice squad Released WR Erik Ezukanma from the practice squad,” JaguarsPR posted on X. In five games played this season, Strange has already registered a team-high 20 catches for 204 yards. He hasn’t scored a touchdown yet, but is currently on pace to set career-high receiving marks. This injury is a tough blow amid his strong start, and the hope is that Strange will be able to pick up where he left off once he’s healthy enough to return. The silver lining for the Jaguars here is that Strange has reportedly avoided a season-ending injury, and the team expects him to be back in around a month. For now, Jacksonville will need to turn to the likes of Johnny Mundt and Hunter Long to fill the void at tight end. The Jaguars also announced on Tuesday that they’ve brought in WR Tim Jones to the practice squad, while Erik Ezukanma has been released. It remains to be seen if Jones will be able to do enough to earn a spot on the active roster. Jacksonville’s next game is on Sunday as they take on the 3-2 Seattle Seahawks in a home game at EverBank Stadium for Week 6.
The Vegas Golden Knights are expected to sign star center Jack Eichel to an eight-year, $108M contract extension, per the Vegas Review-Journal’s Danny Webster. The move was first reported by TSN’s Darren Dreger. Weber adds that the deal is believed to carry a $13.5M cap hit. On a day when the Winnipeg Jets extended star winger Kyle Connor, the Golden Knights have still found a way to steal the show. Eichel’s extension was long anticipated, both for his impact on the Golden Knights’ roster and the intricacies of how Vegas would fit the deal in alongside the $12M cap hit of Mitch Marner. That question has now been answered, with Vegas locking up the tandem through the next eight seasons for $25.5M each season. Landing a max-term extension with Eichel before he has a chance to play alongside 100-point scorer Marner could prove lucrative for the Golden Knights. Eichel had a career year last season, setting career-highs with 94 points and a plus-32 in 77 games. It was a major leap over the 31 goals and 68 points that Eichel managed in 63 games of the 2023-24 season — and the 66 points he scored in 67 games of the 2022-23 campaign. It seems the top center simply needed to ease into his starring role in Vegas after going through a true saga with the Buffalo Sabres. Buffalo drafted Eichel second overall in 2015, properly dubbing him second-fiddle to Connor McDavid’s historic draft season. Despite that seat, Eichel boasted plenty of reason for excitement in his own right and seemed to single-handedly will Boston University to a National Championship loss in his draft year. He brought that team-leading drive straight into the NHL, marked by 24 goals and 56 points in 81 games of the 2015-16 season. That remains the most a Sabres rookie has scored since the 1980s. Even better, Eichel matched it in fewer games of his sophomore season, with 24 goals and 57 points in 61 games. But that quickly became Eichel’s M.O. He was oft-injured, but proved to be the undeniable star of Buffalo’s lineup when healthy. He reached at least 25 goals in each of his next three seasons in Buffalo, and even showed his strength with 82 points in 77 games of the 2018-19 season, when the Sabres collectively only won 33 games. The tension between a struggling club and its productive star reached a peak as the 2020s rolled around — and a breaking point when the two sides couldn’t agree on how Eichel should handle an unprecedented shoulder surgery in 2021. Sabres traded Jack Eichel to Golden Knights in 2021 After multiple bouts back and forth and a seemingly endless run of trade rumors, Buffalo decided to trade Eichel to Vegas in November 2021. In return, the Sabres received Alex Tuch, Peyton Krebs, the draft pick used on Noah Ostlund (2022: 1-16) and a second-round pick traded to Minnesota. All three players remain with Buffalo. Meanwhile, Eichel quickly received the surgery he had preferred upon arriving in Vegas. His 2021-22 campaign was limited to 34 games due to injury, but he recovered in time for the 2022-23 season. Routine injury still marred his year, but he stayed healthy long enough to lead Vegas on a run to the Stanley Cup in 2023. He led the Golden Knights and the postseason in scoring with a dazzling 26 points in 22 games — though the Conn Smythe trophy would go to his goal-scoring teammate Jonathan Marchessault. Regardless, Eichel’s push towards a Cup win showed the Golden Knights, and the hockey world, that he had the grit to be the star center on an NHL champion. He has reaffirmed that thought with 17 points in 18 playoff games since Vegas lifted the Cup. Extension should give Jack Eichel confidence boost With this move, Vegas will place a strong bet on Eichel’s ability to hang onto that role through his 30s. More importantly, they’ll give him a big boost of confidence as he heads into his age-29 season. Eichel has never played alongside a 100-point scorer, nor broken that ceiling himself, but he’ll get his first chance this season. Like Eichel, Marner struggled to crack the century mark for multiple seasons, recording at least 85 points three times between 2021 and 2024. He even reached 99 points in 2022-23. But it wasn’t until last season, when he scored 27 goals and 102 points in 81 games, that Marner was finally able to achieve the feat. In a rare shift, he has now changed teams following a career year and will look to keep the good times rolling on a recent Cup winner. The top of Vegas’ offense is truly a stacked group, featuring Mark Stone, Tomas Hertl, William Karlsson, Pavel Dorofeyev and Ivan Barbashev to support Eichel and Marner. The heights of the lineup seem hard to place, and if all goes well, Vegas has ensured they can keep the band together with a pair of long-term extensions for their two stars.
After quite a whirlwind week, the Cleveland Browns currently sit with a record of 1-4 as Week 6 of the NFL season kicks off on Thursday night. The Browns have been the subject of many conversations over the course of the past few weeks, with their most recent headline making waves mid-day on Tuesday with a surprising inner-division trade with their in-state rival Cincinnati Bengals. Cleveland decided to part ways with their veteran backup quarterback Joe Flacco, which paved the road for their rookies to make more of an immediate impact sooner rather than later. This move has raised questions in various aspects, with the most important being whether the Browns are ready to focus more on next season, which would ultimately put an end to any conversations of winning this season. That conversation seems to hold very little merit, as Browns star cornerback Denzel Ward commented on the trade of Flacco in response to how their season outlook stands. “That’s what this team is about”, “We’re trying to win and bring one to the city and the organization…we’re close”, Denzel Ward said in his press conference on Wednesday. Ward has been a part of the Browns organization for eight years now, which has featured a pair of winning seasons that’s given players a taste of what winning means to the city of Cleveland and their fans starved of victory. With Ward’s comments on where the team stands after their surprising trade, it might seem difficult to buy into his promising comments that the team still wants to win. Cleveland’s defense has been stellar this season most of the way, ranking second in the league in yards allowed per game, but surrendering 24.6 points per game, which is 21st in the league overall. Ward happened to be involved in the game-winning touchdown for Minnesota this past Sunday after giving up a go-ahead touchdown to Vikings receiver Jordan Addison with 25 seconds left in the game, in which he took full responsibility for. His focus this week has shifted back to playing his brand of football along with a stout secondary Cleveland brings, and to prevent any sort of lead change down the stretch, which the Browns led a majority of the game this past week. “That’s all we preach about in these meetings and why we're here is to find a way to win”, “that’s still the 100% goal," Ward said. The Browns have a lot of work to do this week as they prepare for their road trip to Pittsburgh this weekend, a game that will require a great defensive outing from Cleveland’s defense if they hope to find a way to win against a 3-1 Steelers team.