Texas may have a bye week, but the work is far from done. Head coach Steve Sarkisian is using the time to go back to the ‘ol drawing board ahead of one of the most important stretches of the season; OU in Dallas, Georgia at home, and Vanderbilt on the road (don’t sleep on that game).
“Where do we think we need to be for the next couple games, you know, schematically,” Sarkisian told reporters Monday. “What are we trying to work on, or what are we trying to improve upon even schematics that maybe we put in training camp that didn't go the way we wanted to. Maybe we can revisit this week as well. So that's kind of the mindset that I have.”
Sark, who has repeatedly said he doesn’t just coach college football, he’s also a fan, watched the Alabama/Georgia game on television, just like the rest of us.
“I watched the remainder of the first half on TV in my office and then I hurried up and got my car and I raced home to watch the second half of that game,” Sarkisian said, explaining he had an inkling that the game was far from over. “You know, one thing about Georgia and Kirby, they're champions. They're a two-time national champion program since he's been there. They’ve played for it. They've been involved in high-level games. I just never thought they were just going to roll over, and they didn't, and they fought their way all the way back. And what an epic game.”
You would be surprised how many coaches and players aren’t really football fans in their spare time.
That probably seems mind-boggling to Orangebloods readers who spend an inordinate amount of time reading about college football in general, and UT football in particular. But think about it this way and you may begin to understand. When it is your job, when you’re surrounded by it all day at work, it’s not at all uncommon to want to take a break from it when you get home.
Not Sark.
Sarkisian watches football because he enjoys it. He wants his team to enjoy and watch football too.
“I do encourage our guys to do that. I think that we have grown into that as a team,” he said. “Because of the ‘situational masters meetings’ that we have on Fridays where I show them different stuff and different games, I think they like watching football. Maybe they did before, I don't know, but I sure feel like this now more than ever, we're watching a lot of football. They're commenting on it, commenting to me about what's going on in games.”
This weekend Sark and the boys will get plenty of time to watch football. Sark says he and his staff are looking forward to watching some high school football this weekend to see recruits.
“It's exciting,” he said. “It's always a good thing when you get to go on the road undefeated and recruit, you know, it's kind of like they roll out the red carpet for you.”
The players are getting Friday, Saturday and Sunday off to get fresh and get healthy.
“I wrote that down, get fresh and get and get healthy,” said Sarkisian. “When I say get fresh, yes, there's a physical get fresh component to this. I think there's a mental get-fresh too, right? Like you get kind of reenergized, recharge the battery a little bit, because I never want it to be mundane. I never want to be stale. I never wanted to feel like we're going through the motions. I want our guys when they walk in the door of Moncrief to have a bounce in their step, to exude positive energy and positive vibes that that can generate energy in the next person.”
The players should have plenty of energy and positive vibes when they get back to Austin next week. It’s OU week. One of the best rivalries in all of college football.
“Rivalries in college football? That's what this is all about,” said Sarkisian. “It's so special. And I love the pageantry of college football. I love the energy of the crowd. I love the smell of the popcorn, all that stuff. And there's nothing like this game. When you pull into the State Fair and you see fans from both sides, and they're intermixed, and both teams' busses pull up, and we're in the same tunnel, and you come out and there's all those OU fans, and you look and there's all the sea of burnt orange. You're just like, I can't wait to get over there with my people. I just want to get with them. That's what it's all about.
“The best way to enjoy and experience a rivalry game is to prepare really well,” he continued. “The people that get caught up in ‘the game,’ on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, miss the preparation, and then you don't play very good, and then you get your butt kicked, and then you think, ‘Man, this was a terrible experience.’ And so if you if you want a good experience, we got to make sure we prepare really well so we can enjoy the experience, because we're playing good football.”
The Horns will need to play really good football over the next couple of weeks as Texas goes to Dallas for the OU game and then it’s the game that everyone has had circled on their calendar since the schedule was released … Georgia at home.
Sark says he’s using the time off ahead of those games to go back to the ‘ol drawing board.
“Where do we think we need to be for the next couple games schematically,” he said. “What are we trying to work on, or what are we trying to improve upon? Even schematics that maybe we put in in training camp didn't go the way we wanted to. Maybe we can revisit that this week as well.”
By the way, this stretch of games until the next bye week; OU, Georgia and then Vanderbilt, Sark is calling ‘phase two’ of the season.
“I save all of my creativeness for the play calls,” Sark said with a chuckle. “It’s just phase two.”
Sark getting creative with his play calls? That should make the college football fans in all of us, excited about what’s coming next.
AROUND THE SEC
There are plenty of good games for Sark and the boys to watch this week.
(all times Central)
Missouri @ Texas A&M (11:00 am)
Auburn @ Georgia (2:30 pm)
Ole Miss @ South Carolina (2:30 pm)
Alabama @ Vanderbilt (3:15 pm)
Tennessee @ Arkansas (6:30 pm)
UCF @ Florida (6:45 pm)
I’m really looking forward to these games. All of these feel like games where we should learn a lot more about who the real contenders are in the SEC. Don’t get me wrong, none of these are Georgia vs. Alabama … but they are all tests in a different sort of way.
Missouri and Texas A&M are both ranked in the top 25, but both have questions. We came into this season saying it was possible that Mizzou could end up playing in the SEC Championship Game because of its relatively light schedule. That is still, conceivably, possible. But after struggling against Boston College and needing overtime to beat Vanderbilt, it feels unlikely. Going on the road and beating Texas A&M may be enough to start turning opinions around about them.
Plus, this game comes with a little extra heat.
Missouri’s assistant director of on-campus recruiting, Briah Reed, is banned from practice this week because the Tigers are going up against her brother, A&M quarterback Marcel Reed.
Georgia should have an easy win against Auburn. They’re playing at home and the opponent is … well, Auburn. The same Auburn that threw a pick-six to lose at home last week to Oklahoma.
That being said, this is a rivalry game and things happen in those kinds of games. And, right up until the point where Payton Thorne threw the interception, it was looking like Auburn had finally figured out their quarterback.
Thorne finished the game 21/32 for 338 yards, 3 touchdowns and the one, unfortunate, interception. Bear in mind, that was against a very good OU defense.
So, will Georgia win? Most likely. But could this be a closer game than many expect? Absolutely.
I still have no idea how good, or bad, Ole Miss is. Granted, they lost to Kentucky at home last week … and that should never happen. But this is the same Kentucky that took Georgia down to the wire. The Wildcats also needed a miracle fourth-down conversion to make it happen.
On paper, Ole Miss has enough talent to beat anyone. But it is hard to trust them to play up to that potential right now.
Meanwhile, South Carolina had absolutely no trouble in beating Kentucky when those two teams played. So by the law of transitive property ….
Alabama is flying high right now as the number one team in the country, fresh off their exciting victory over Georgia.
But that game was at home and this week they have to go on the road to Vanderbilt.
Ok, I’m not really suggesting Bama is going to lose. But Vandy’s a little tougher this year than people realize and their quarterback, Diego Pavia, ain’t skeered of no one.
“This is a whole new team,” Pavia told reporters this week. “In the NIL era, every team will be different every single year. We got a team full of dogs who prepare every week like they want to play on Sunday."
“And so with that, the only person that knows who’s going to win on Saturday is God. So we’ll be prepared. We’re going to do everything we can to win a football game. We fell just short to the No. 7 team in the nation. So we gotta get over that little edge, and then start punching some wins here.”
Tennessee has looked like one of the best teams in the country and they are ranked like that too. They have gotten there with an elite defense.
But this is the first time playing an offense that actually has a pulse. Arkansas is 13th in the country in total offense … even though they’ve struggled to convert a lot of those yards into scores, ranking 33rd in the country in scoring offense.
Billy Napier and Florida had better beat UCF at home. Not only are the Knights looked down upon as the lesser cousin (not even little brother status), but they just got drubbed by Deion Sanders’ Colorado team.
TWEETS OF INTEREST:
Sark said this week that DeAndre Moore has been able to achieve success this year because he patterned himself after Jordan Whittington. He says Moore stuck by J-Whitt’s side and learned as much as he could from him.
It paid off.
And it’s not a bad thing to model yourself after a guy who made things happen in Austin, and is now doing the same in Los Angeles.
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I’ve talked about how bad OU’s offensive line is. Maybe this will put it in perspective.
The Sooners pretty much had to make the switch to Michael Hawkins Jr. because otherwise, they were going to get Jackson Arnold killed.
Are you paying attention Colin Simmons?
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Sark talked about Georgia’s will to fight … and that’s something that Kirby Smart was proud of his team about after last week’s game.
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The Texas women's basketball team is back on the court and better than ever with Rori Harmon coming back from surgery.
Last year's deep run was just the appetizer.
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That cream Texas ice hockey jersey is pretty sweet.
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The devastation from Hurricane Helene is simply incredible. Any time satellite photos can show the path of destruction, you know it was a big storm.
God bless everyone still suffering.
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Meanwhile, I have to wonder if Helene isn’t responsible for this?
Who ever thought Galveston water could look like that?
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This is the kind of preparation I want to see from the Longhorn players ahead of next week’s Red River Rivalry.
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It’s not just Texans that don’t like crossing into Oklahoma.
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