AUSTIN, Texas (AP) \u2014 All smiles after the biggest victory of his career, Texas quarterback Arch Manning said Monday he wasn\u2019t bothered by the harsh criticism leveled at him the first half of the season.<\/p>\n
Everyone, he said, is entitled to their opinion of him.<\/p>\n
\u201cLook, I wasn\u2019t playing well and I\u2019m going to continue to get better. But you know, everyone has their own opinion. That\u2019s what\u2019s good about America, everyone gets freedom of speech. It doesn\u2019t bother me,\u201d Manning said Monday<\/a>.<\/p>\n Manning struggled through his first five games as a starter while No. 21 Texas (4-2, 1-1 Southeastern Conference) fell all the way from preseason No. 1 to unranked for a week.<\/p>\n But a crisp and efficient effort in a 23-6 win<\/a> over rival Oklahoma in the pressure cooker of the Cotton Bowl in Dallas was the kind of performance by a player and team that could turn a season around.<\/p>\n Manning completed 21 of 27 passes<\/a> for 166 yards and threw the go-ahead 12-yard TD to DeAndre Moore Jr. on the opening drive of the second half for the Longhorns. He both managed the game and delivered the big plays in a confidence builder of a game.<\/p>\n But those moments have been the exception rather than the rule for the player who was was preseason favorite for the Heisman Trophy<\/a>.<\/p>\n Those kind of expectations opened him to intense criticism amid a rough start for the player and the team. The critics reached a fever pitch last week after a road loss at Florida<\/a> left the Longhorns unranked.<\/p>\n And they\u2019ll be back if he has another poor game.<\/p>\n \u201cI feel like I try to do my best to block out the noise, and then you get 100 text messages, \u2018Keep blocking out the noise,\u2019\u201d Manning said<\/a>. \u201cThere must be a lot of noise. So yeah, I try my best.\u201d<\/p>\n Texas plays at Kentucky (2-3, 0-3) on Saturday night.<\/p>\n ___<\/p>\n Get poll alerts and updates on the AP Top 25 throughout the season. Sign up here<\/a> and here<\/a> (AP News mobile app). AP college football: https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/ap-top-25-college-football-poll<\/a> and https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/college-football<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"AUSTIN, Texas (AP) \u2014 All smiles after the biggest victory of his career, Texas quarterback Arch Manning said…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2297,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[1892,2556,2919,261,416,300,2918,2917,2916,154,27,29,537,536,28,1760],"class_list":["post-2296","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-ap-top-25-college-football-poll","tag-censorship","tag-civil-rights","tag-college-football","tag-college-sports","tag-football","tag-human-rights","tag-kentucky","tag-ky-state-wire","tag-sports","tag-texas","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-longhorns","tag-texas-longhorns-football","tag-texas-news","tag-tx-state-wire"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2296","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2296"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2296\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2297"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2296"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2296"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2296"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}