I don't know that I've staked out a position on Manning one way or the other (blasphemous I know) other than to say this past offseason that I was surprised with how much of the fan base was seemingly against Manning.
It's hard to offer up where Manning stands in a vacuum, nor do I think it's particularly helpful, but it's also difficult to identify what context we should be providing for how Manning is doing. Do we compare him with previous Wake coaches, other ACC coaches at present, all other NCAA coaches at present, with other programs but also adding in some "multiplier" for where we as a fan base believe Wake "should" be compared to other programs (where success at, say, Duke, Wake, and NC A&T would all be viewed differently), or a mixture of all of this?
My current position is that Manning is doing a solid job at this juncture at Wake and that he has experienced some decent success this year. He's seemingly very good at identifying talent while recruiting and has shown pretty solid indicators that he is able to lock down good to great recruits. Similarly, he and his staff (which I think he gets credit for as well) have done a good to very good job of developing the talent that has been brought in. His in-game coaching has at times been pretty bad to downright terrible, but he still seems to be growing into his own style and identifying how he wants to manage games himself which makes sense as he's only been a head coach for five years. Do I wish he had more of an "identity" at this point? Maybe at times, but he seems open to changing how he operates (see substitution patterns changing a bit over time as well as use of time outs) - which I think is more than even the most ardent defenders of [name redacted] would or could say.
All-in-all I'm happy with Manning as our head coach for now and at this point I think that's all that really needs to be said or thought about. We can revisit Manning's position at the end of the season when there's a larger sample size and a third season to compare in whole to the previous two years.