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“It feels good to be back,” Arch Manning said after his glorious afternoon against Vanderbilt. And boy, is Arch Manning back. The QB is finally getting on track to live up to his long-lost reputation. And the most impressive part about Manning’s win is that he did it all while still being in delicate health. Manning went down with a brutal blow to the head in the game that made him an overnight hero in Texas. If Steve Sarkisian wanted to go to the playoffs for the third time, he needed Manning on that Mississippi State level. But as the QB entered concussion protocol, things got a little tense. On Saturday, Manning completed 25 of his 33 passes for 328 yards and three touchdowns. But there are suspicions that the QB still wasn’t a 100% fit. David Pollack made an interesting observation to support those claims. “You could tell he was dinged up, too, by the way, his teammates celebrated with him. They didn’t come like, tackle him, slap him on the head. They were very smart with him. He probably told them that,” he said in a November 2 episode of See Ball Get Ball. ADVERTISEMENT Article continues below this ad Manning was cleared from the injury report just a day before the Vanderbilt clash. The concussion protocol requires players to undergo a set of checks, each taking roughly a day. Failing one of them would mean the checklist is reset at the last cleared step. It’s a delicate process, since concussion symptoms can linger for some time or even present long after the actual injury. You’ve got to give it to Manning for the way he came back after the blow. He told the press that he began practicing on Wednesday. That gave the QB just 2 days to return to his gear. Steve Sarkisian said after the game that Manning felt okay to go after Thursday itself. But the staff wasn’t so confident. “[We] took one more precaution, just to make sure when he woke up Friday, he was in a good space,” Sarkisian said after the game. Still, Manning played on Saturday like he never went down with the hit in the first place. ADVERTISEMENT Article continues below this ad Arch Manning’s return to the Vanderbilt game has eased a lot of fans’ worries, as Texas entered its most difficult stretch of the season. It was a risky move to have him come back so soon after the concussion. Manning’s uncle, however, shared an amusing loophole that he used while playing in the NFL. Read Top Stories First From EssentiallySports Click here and check box next to EssentiallySports Peyton Manning admits he used a backdoor to get out of concussion protocol early “I think the concussion helped,” Arch Manning said jokingly to the press. Though the QB is beyond glad that he could play on Saturday, concussions are a serious injury. The protocol is in place to prioritize the player’s health. But Peyton Manning shared a wild story that would help him clear the concussion protocol on a guaranteed basis. In 2011, the senior Manning confirmed that he would purposely set a low baseline for concussion clearance before the season, so that he would perform better when he actually went through it during the season. ADVERTISEMENT Article continues below this ad “They have these new (brain) tests we have to take,” he told ESPN. “Before the season, you have to look at 20 pictures and turn the paper over and then try to draw those 20 pictures. And they do it with words, too. Twenty words, you flip it over, and try to write those 20 words. Then, after a concussion, you take the same test and if you do worse than you did on the first test, you can’t play. So I just try to do badly on the first test,” he added.
