With just over one week until the first kickoff, No. 4 Texas football has been having weekly scrimmages to prepare. Head coach Steve Sarkisian uses these scrimmages to evaluate his team based on all aspects of the game.
After the program made its first-ever College Football Playoff appearance last year and now faces a looming entry into the Southeastern Conference, the start of the season is highly anticipated by many. Former Alabama head coach Nick Saban even picked the Longhorns to face off against the No. 1 Georgia Bulldogs in the SEC Championship game.
For Sarkisian to ensure that his team will be ready to play at the highest level, and after spending the summer nit-picking and focusing on small technical aspects, he’s taking a step back.
“I’m trying to look at (the team) from a 10,000 foot view, and not through a straw. Not just as what does the offense do, but (what can we do) as a team?” Sarkisian said. “I’ve been impressed with where we’re at.”
Despite the strong finish to the 2023 season, Sarkisian has spent time afterward integrating several new players into the lineup. With additions from the transfer portal and high school signees, one priority for returning Texas players was to get everyone ingrained in the culture Sarkisian preached about during the 2023 season.
One of the main aspects of Sarkisian’s culture is the on-field standard. All players have taken it upon themselves to hold each other to the standard, involving several factors of excellence.
“(The standard is) discipline, toughness and commitment, all the time,” sophomore defensive back Malik Muhammad said.
Muhammad, the defensive players and defensive coordinator Pete Kwiatkowski have been working all summer to improve all aspects of the defense, specifically the weak points from last season: pass defense and tackling.
Despite having one of the best run defenses in the country, Texas struggled against the passing game. While Sarkisian has zoomed out on the team, Kwiatkowski has done the opposite.
“We’re focusing more on the details,” Muhammad said. “We’ve got our d-line straight. I feel like we’ve got a great defense this year, but (we’ve been) mainly honing in on the details.”
While the defensive line lost the Big 12 Defensive Player of the Year in T’Vondre Sweat and Byron Murphy to the 2024 NFL Draft, senior defensive lineman Vernon Broughton has worked with the rest of the group to return as much talent as possible. The defensive line has the advantage of matching up with an offensive line that returns with all but one starter.
With Kenny Baker, a former NFL assistant defensive line coach, as the new defensive line coach, the group has become much more technical and is prepared to continue wreaking havoc on opposing offensive lines, even without the two star players.
“I don’t pay attention to (Sweat and Murphy being gone),” Broughton said. “I know what we’ve got and we’re going to do what we gotta do.”
Texas will have its first chance to prove itself on Aug. 31 when Colorado State comes to Darrell K Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium for the season opener. Until then, Texas will go into a full mock-game week schedule to make sure everyone is in the right headspace to play when the time comes.
