“The Sink to the Bottom for Arch Manning Is Going to Be Disgusting”: Mike Florio on the Giants, Colts and the Saints Potentially Tanking for the QB This Year

If you’ve been following the pre-draft process for tonight’s 2025 NFL Draft even a little bit, you probably know one thing for sure: this QB class is considered relatively weak. Many have suggested that Miami’s Cam Ward, who is a lock to be taken No. 1 overall, would have only been the fifth- or sixth-ranked QB in last year’s stronger class.

This year, it seems that teams really only view Ward, Shedeur Sanders, and Jaxson Dart as worth an early look in the draft. But even the latter two are no guarantees to go in the first round. Many teams that one would think are desperate to draft a QB have been conspicuously quiet. With a stacked 2026 QB draft class on the horizon, they seem content to wait.

This has led some, like Mike Florio, to predict (probably correctly) that some filthy tank jobs will take place across the NFL during the 2025 season. Teams that need a quarterback but aren’t taking one this year are clearly aiming at next year’s draft. They’ll be looking to land one of the top picks and get their choice of a loaded QB class, headlined by Texas’ Arch Manning and Penn State’s Drew Allar.

“Tanking is real. … It occurred to me yesterday, this year, as we get closer to the end of the season … it’s gonna be worse than ever,” said the PFT journalist.

“The sink to the bottom, ‘Oh, we’re not tanking, we’re not tanking, we wanna see how our fourth-string quarterback looks.’ The sink to the bottom for Arch Manning is gonna be disgusting this year. I bet there’s gonna be memos from the league office, it’s gonna be bad, it’s gonna be bad.”

This is a very real worry for football fans who like to watch their teams try to win every game. A lot of clubs—including many, as Florio pointed out, that have ties to the Manning family—are kind of showing their tanking hands by not going after a QB in this cycle.

“Think about all the teams in the NFL with Manning ties. And there’s a chance, they could be three of the teams in the mix: the Giants, Colts, Saints. All three of them, when you look at it going into the season, there’s a chance the wheels come off for each of them, and they decide halfway through the season, let’s just go with it, because we might get Arch Manning,” Florio explained.

The New York Giants signed Russell Wilson and Jameis Winston this offseason. Both of them are capable pros but are not QBs of the future. They seem to have cooled on Shedeur Sanders significantly, which means they’re likely to muddle through the 2025 campaign with Wilson or Winston at the controls.

The Indianapolis Colts are in a weird spot where they want Anthony Richardson to work out, but if he doesn’t, they’re not going to be too fussed by it, because it means a high draft pick for them in 2026.

The New Orleans Saints, meanwhile, are in QB purgatory. A report about a potentially season-ending shoulder injury for Derek Carr has put them in the mix for Sanders or perhaps Ole Miss QB Jaxson Dart. If they don’t take a QB and Carr is out, they could very well be the worst team in the league. That would be fine by them if they’re tanking for Manning.

We know Manning and Allar. But there are a bevy of other potentially blue-chip QB prospects coming out in 2026 as well. Dan Orlovsky listed them in the tweet above. The roll call includes UCLA’s recent transfer acquisition, Nico Iamaleava, and Georgia’s Carson Beck, among others.