Last season, Quinn Ewers suffered a torn oblique and high-ankle sprain early in the season that severely hampered his play.
Even with a hobbled Ewers, the Texas Longhorns still reached the semifinals of the College Football Playoff, giving the eventual national champion, Ohio State, a competitive contest.
With Ewers off to the NFL, young phenom Arch Manning slides in under center for the Longhorns. Despite starting just a pair of games at the collegiate level, Manning's hype has made him the early favorite to hoist the Heisman Trophy and to be the first player off the board in the 2026 NFL Draft.
With Arch potentially out of the picture next year, Texas might've found a potential long-term successor.
This week, Longhorn's commit Dia Bell won the 2025 Elite 11 MVP, a prestigious high school quarterback camp with 20 top recruits from around the country.
"Surgical performance by Bell in the 7-on-7 game," 247's director of scouting Andrew Ivins wrote. "Cool. Calm. Collected. Bell sees the field at an advanced level and works through his progression, looking off defenders. He owns smooth mechanics, which might be the best here. Not afraid to take what a defense is giving him."
Bell is the son of former NBA shooting guard Raja Bell, best remembered as a vital piece of the "Seven Seconds or Less" Phoenix Suns teams.
Even though it's not within football, Bell, like Manning, has a family infrastructure familiar with the inner workings of pro sports. That pedigree gives him an immediate advantage in understanding his role within a program and what it takes to succeed at the highest level.
Don't be shocked if, even as a freshman in 2026, Bell has the keys to the Texas offense should Manning declare for the NFL draft.