After No. 6 Texas’ nail-biting 27-24 win against Vanderbilt on Saturday, the Longhorns will head into their bye week with plenty to focus and improve on. One of the most critical things that needs to be addressed is penalties.
In its last two games, Texas has accumulated 18 penalties, increasing the team’s average to just under seven penalties per game. For a team as talented as the No. 6 Longhorns, penalties can become the factor that turns an easy win into a close bout, or even a loss.
“You never know the impact of everything until you boil it back down, and you start to look at it,” head coach Steve Sarkisian said after rewatching film from the game.
During last weekend’s matchup, Texas held 10 penalties for a combined loss of 107 yards in contrast to Vanderbilt’s four for 35 yards lost. Seven of the calls on Texas, Sarkisian said, had major consequences, and four had very explosive offensive plays that were then called back, shaving potential points off of the Texas scoreboard.
A look through all the penalties shows a variety of different positions on both offense and defense that will need to be cleaned up.
“Sometimes you look at numbers, and it’s easy to point to that group,” Sarkisian said about the offensive line usually being the culprit of their penalty calls.
“The offensive line is kind of like the quarterback. The quarterback always gets too much praise when things go well and probably gets too much criticism when they don’t. The offensive line isn’t far behind, you know, and so everybody’s got to do their job better.”
Sarkisian pointed out the holding on a kickoff that ultimately put the Longhorns back on their own 10-yard line, significantly reducing the chance of producing a complete drive down the field.
As for the defense, Texas notched brutal pass interference and roughing-the-passer calls, both of which led to the Commodores making their way to the end zone and ultimately causing a 21-point swing in the game. On top of this, the offense had several holding calls that mostly stemmed from tight ends and even calls of unsportsmanlike conduct, both of which can be easily avoided.
While Sarkisian said that they are looking to clean up these penalties, it can be quite difficult to emulate a game environment in a practice setting, which is a big part of how some penalties get called. However, Sarkisian is confident that they can overcome this obstacle.
“We can,” Sarkisian said about creating a game setting in practice. “You know, our crowd noise sometimes is louder in practice than it actually is in the game.” Now with less than two weeks before they are back in Darrell K Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium to take on Florida, the Longhorns need to focus on preventing these mistakes, as they are deep into conference play in a conference where mistakes can be costly. However, Sarkisian knows this and is confident in the team’s ability to improve.
“We’re not a finished product,” he said. “I think our best football is still ahead of us, and we’re looking forward to that.”
