Texas head coach Steve Sarkisian said Monday that his offense showed its youth and immaturity in Saturday’s 10-17 loss to No. 4 TCU. 

A field goal in the third quarter was all that the Longhorns’ offense managed to score against the Horned Frogs. Including the second half of its game against Kansas State, Texas has failed to score an offensive touchdown in its last six quarters of play. 

An offense that was averaging slightly under 450 yards a game entering the matchup only mustered 199 total yards Saturday. Although it can be common to place blame primarily on the quarterback for offensive struggles, Sarkisian said that the offense as a whole just could not get out of its own way.

“The reality is that we need to play better as a unit,” Sarkisian said. “We need to coach better as a staff. We need to make sure we’re doing a better job of giving our players confidence and putting them in a position to have success. Clearly, those things didn’t happen.”

During his press conference Monday, Sarkisian said the passing game’s issues stemmed from a lack of precision and timing. Redshirt freshman quarterback Quinn Ewers could not connect with his receivers, completing 17 of his 39 passes for 171 yards and an interception.

Ewers struggled to find a rhythm against the Horned Frogs with his passes. However, Sarkisian said he does not put Ewers at fault for the frequency of deep shots. He said the play designs for the long throws are largely progression-based, but Ewers’ lack of downfield accuracy was still unhelpful to the passing game.

“In the end, it’s the combination of the quarterback and the receiver for the timing to be there that needs to be on point,” Sarkisian said. “The ball placement needs to be where it is (supposed to be), and then ultimately making the play when the ball comes your way.”

Meanwhile, Texas got very little out of its run game as well. The ground game produced a net total of 28 yards against TCU, its lowest since its 2017 game against the Horned Frogs.

Minimal amounts of yardage on the ground paired with incomplete deep shots forced the Longhorns to face a lot of unfavorable third-down distances. 

“Our job is to try to get first downs,” Sarkisian said. “Ideally, we (would) put ourselves in more favorable situations on third down.”

Sitting at 6–4 with two games left in the regular season, Sarkisian still believes Texas is a good football team. Each one of the Longhorns’ losses have been one-score losses. Sarkisian said Texas is just searching for a level of consistency in the way it plays.

“(In our conference,) you’re not going to get by playing okay,” Sarkisian said. “You have to play high-level football. It doesn’t matter how old or how young your team is; nobody cares about that. What we care about is execution, consistency and trying to find a way to win the ball game.”