Archie Manning walks back Arch-to-Cowboys comment: ‘Got out of hand’

Maybe Archie Manning isn’t as desperate to see his grandson Arch Manning play for the Dallas Cowboys as the headlines previously made it seem.

The 75-year-old former NFL quarterback recently made news when someone asked him on camera where he would like to see Arch Manning land in the NFL, and shared the answer on TikTok. And after seeing those headlines spread, Manning is now attempting to walk his answer back.

“I hope he’ll play three years in Texas,” Manning first said about his grandson who is slated to be the Texas Longhorns starting quarterback next season. “It’s funny, nobody’s ever asked me that. Right off the bat, if somebody asked me, I’d say Cowboys.”

Well, that’s all it took for the internet to be inundated with headlines claiming Archie Manning wants his grandson to play for the Dallas Cowboys. And in defense of those headlines, that’s pretty much what he said. But when asked to clarify this week in a follow-up interview, Manning admitted he never expected that brief exchange to spread as rapidly as it did.

“That is something that kinda got outta hand,” Manning said. “I have a sports bar in New Orleans and I was just being nice to a patron. I told him I hope Arch will play three years of college football and he said, ‘And then maybe to the Cowboys?’ I said, ‘That’d be fine with me.’ I didn’t know he was going to put that on TikTok.”

And now Archie Manning knows something about how the aggregate media works. Manning’s recollection doesn’t exactly match the original video. Because it certainly sounded like he came up with the “Cowboys” answer on his own, but we don’t know how it may have been edited. Regardless, it doesn’t sound like Archie plans to help orchestrate his grandson playing for the Dallas Cowboys the same way he did with Eli Manning and the New York Giants more than two decades ago.

[Sports Illustrated]