Texas HC Steve Sarkisian admires Longhorns’ toughness and reveals a possible new offensive identity in Monday’s press conference
Despite another lackluster performance, the Texas head coach is positive heading into Week 4.
Texas didn’t do a ton of impressive things Saturday in a 27-10 victory over UTEP. But, in Monday’s media availability, Steve Sarkisian was adamant about how his team has impressed him thus far through three games.
“Naturally, we missed a few things in the passing game, and it was like ‘we’re so close.’ Part of me is really excited about that because I know how close we are to this thing hitting on all cylinders,” Sarkisian said. “That’s our job as coaches and as players to get us to that point, and I believe we will.
“Things to clean up, but more importantly for us is (it’s) kind of exciting because I think the things that we need to clean up are very fixable,” Sarkisian said. “That part’s exciting to me because I can envision what it’s going to look like when we do clean it up.”
Steve Sarkisian admitted there might be a new wrinkle to the offense now.
“We leaned into (Arch) running the ball a little more,” Sarkisian said. “We’ve got to wrap our heads around that’s kind of our offense, leaning into the QB run game.”
The passing performance was just flat-out bad. He was just 11-for-25 for 114 yards, a touchdown, and an interception. But, running the football, Manning toted it nine times for 51 yards and two touchdowns. And these weren’t scramble drills. Sarkisian drew up some designed runs for him and saw a good amount of success.
“I anticipate he’s going to right this ship quickly and that’s a credit to the players and coaches around him and helping him do that.”
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The true freshman finished with two tackles and an interception. He is a versatile playmaker who, as cliché as it is, always finds himself around the football and making plays on the football. Sarkisian was very complimentary of his performance and singled him out.
“We didn’t recruit him for three years. We recruited the guy for like 2.5 months maybe. Then he decided to flip and come here but he came in with a workmanlike mentality, and it shows. It’s paying off for him.”
For now, though, it’s evident Texas has warts. And are still in the process of clearing those up. And Steve Sarkisian knows it. You’ve got one more week to warm-up for SEC play. Better make it count.
“I’m not naive to think we wouldn’t have some growing pains. I just want those growing pains to get us as tall as fast as we can and feel good and start playing. That’s the race that we’re in. I’m comfortable in saying we’re going to get there. I just want to get there sooner rather than later. Like everybody else, we want to see a well oiled machine offensively, special teams, on defense, playing our best football when our best is needed. So we’ve got to get there as quickly as possible.”
