Following Saturday’s 23-6 win over No. 6 Oklahoma, Texas football coach Steve Sarkisian barked at his press conference that “there was a lot of (expletive) getting talked about our team, about these guys, and I think they responded.”

Sarkisian never went indepth about the exact comments that had drawn his ire. Was he upset that Texas was suddenly becoming an afterthought in the College Football Playoff discussion after losing two of its first five games or that several prognosticators were picking Oklahoma to beat the Longhorns at the Cotton Bowl? Maybe. Or was he angry about a certain article that had been written about his quarterback? We’ll never know.

Last week, The Athletic published an opinion piece in which writer Will Leitch wondered aloud if Arch Manning was “college football’s first flop.” Manning was coming off a decent performance against Florida, but neither he nor the Longhorns had been living up to their preseason billing as the respective front-runners for the Heisman Trophy and national championship.

As with most things related to Manning, the article created an online firestorm last week. Manning, though, insists that he was unaware.

“I didn’t know that (article was written). I guess I do now,” Manning said Monday.

As for being called a flop in a headline, Manning shrugged. “I wasn’t playing well, and I’m going to continue to get better,” he shrugged. “Everyone has their own opinion, and that’s what’s good about America: you get freedom of speech. It doesn’t bother me.”

While leading Texas to a 17-point win over its ranked Red River rival, Manning completed 21 of his 27 passes. A few days later, he talked about trying to ignore the outside noise that his name generates even if it is admittedly hard when “you get 100 text messages (saying) ‘keep blocking out the noise.'”

Manning said he has the same attitude about the positive things that are said about him.

He told reporters that he hadn’t seen an Instagram post from teammate Michael Taaffe that featured a picture of the quarterback celebrating with the Golden Hat trophy and a caption that read “What they saying now, QB1.”

“We won a game, yeah, but there’s a lot of work to do,” Manning said. “You can’t ride the highs and lows. You’ve got to stay even and keep going.”