5 Quick Thoughts: Steve Sarkisian goes 1-0

Texas had a great start to the year. Week 1 can be finicky, just ask the Longhorns’ rivals up to the north who had to sweat out a drive by Tulane after yielding an onside kick. The Sooners eked out a 40-35 victory. Similarly, Iowa State was up to their usual Week 1 nonsense, hanging on for a 16-10 win against Northern Iowa. Texas’ Week 2 opponent, Arkansas, had a nasty scare against Texas’ Week 3 opponent, the Rice Owls, before pulling away.

Things are sloppy and a team’s sense of themselves, how to win games, and simply how to execute their gameplan at a fundamental level is rarely worse than it is in Week 1.

For all those reasons, it was a positive sign for Texas to play a relatively clean game, whip the Ragin’ Cajuns, and cover the spread. Texas’ expected strengths looked like strengths and their feared weaknesses were apparent but not crippling. Louisiana was fairly sharp. They weren’t giving the game away to Texas, they were just overmatched by a team with superior talent who demonstrated said talent on the field.

Steve Sarkisian and his staff got a lot of their players on the field, including finding several drives for Casey Thompson with the game more or less in hand but Louisiana still playing to win it. There won’t be any quarterback controversies based on the events of this game but both played very well.

Quick thought no. 1: #DontCareGotBijan

The Texas run game wasn’t astounding in Week 1. They had a slow start with Bijan Robinson getting only 38 yards rushing on 10 carries in the first half before the flow of the game and the Texas heat had drained the Cajun defense of the fight they needed to hold up in the trenches.

It was a much more varied run game than we’ve seen from Texas in quite some time. They had a few pin and pull outside runs, two different varieties in fact, some counter runs, and then the expected inside/outside zone combination. Kyle Flood’s crew majored in outside zone as expected and Texas flashed a lot of potential within the scheme but haven’t put it all together just yet.

Bijan is clearly deadly when he can threaten the perimeter of the defense and set up cutbacks. He got loose in the second half in the outside zone game and finished with 103 yards on 20 carries at 5.3 ypc with a touchdown run. Some of his most impressive work was actually as a receiver. He scored the first touchdown of the Sarkisian era on a well disguised mesh concept (running the wheel route) and also regularly flexed out. Hudson Card found him on a glance route from the slot and Bijan finished with four catches for 73 yards and another touchdown.

All told, Bijan had 24 touches, 176 yards, and two touchdowns. #BellCow

Quick thought no. 2: Fantastic opener for Hudson Card

The Texas O-line also had some issues early in pass protection. Nothing surprising, particularly in Week 1 with new schemes, but they weren’t playing clean early and Card saw a lot of pressure.

He took a few sacks but also completed 14-of-21 passes for 224 yards at 10.2 ypa with two touchdown passes and zero interceptions. As the wise adage goes on quarterback play, pick two of the following three outcomes: high YPA numbers, low sack rate, low interception rate. You can’t achieve all three, either the quarterback is holding onto the ball and taking a sack when things aren’t going great or he’s forcing the ball and risking a turnover.

Card was able to make plays with his feet, scrambling or buying time to find a receiver, on multiple occasions and protected the ball well from turnovers while landing some real shots in the passing game.

His touchdown pass to Cade Brewer was a laser into a tight window, then he also added a touchdown run with his feet on a zone-bluff read play. The Longhorns appeared to be running split zone but Card read the backside end and instead of trapping the end, Cade Brewer lead around the edge for Card on for a score on the keeper read.

After removing sack yardage (three sacks), Card had three carries for 13 yards and a touchdown. One of the other carries was a successful conversion on 4th-and-6 when Card scrambled.

Thompson was also sharp, going 4-of-5 with 41 yards at 8.2 ypa with a touchdown pass when he hit Jordan Whittington on a bubble screen off split zone (again!) and J-Whitt overpowered a worn down Cajun defense for a touchdown.

Quick thought no. 3: Ovie Oghoufo is the top pass-rusher

The Notre Dame transfer end/linebacker, Ovie Oghoufo, got a lot of action in this game. He played at Sam linebacker in base defense and then regularly subbed in for Ray Thornton at “Buck” end (the weakside edge), particularly on third downs.

He had a terrific sack on Louisiana quarterback Levi Lewis where he simply whipped his man around the edge and landed the big, blindside hit.

Overall the Texas pass rush was really promising in this game against a very veteran offensive line. Defensive coordinator Pete Kwiatkowksi was working the 2-4-5 defense with all of its opportunities for “creeper” zone blitzes where the defense can overwhelm a weak spot in the protection while only sending four pass-rushers and leaving seven in coverage to execute a base coverage.

One of his best tricks in this game was taking advantage of how Louisiana had to double or triple team the Texas nose tackles to protect their smaller center Shane Vallot. PK would either bring or show double A-gap blitzes bringing Luke Brockermeyer and DeMarvion Overshown through the interior against a unit trying to get bodies on Keondre Coburn and the other nose tackles. Then he’d drop both edges back into coverage, leaving a seven man base coverage. Texas had three sacks on the game. One by Oghoufo, one by Brock and DMO in tandem on a double A-gap blitz (in the red zone, forcing a field goal), and then one more by jack Jett Bush to close the game.

Quick thought no. 4: The defense met expectations. ULL<20 points

It was a great first game by the new Texas defense. When this scheme is working properly, what you’ll tend to see is endless check downs throw into the flats with offensive success determined by their ability to make tacklers miss in space and to work their way down the field.

At the end of the day, for all the cleverness in personnel deployment, blitzing, and pattern-matching, at its heart this is an old school Cover 3 defense designed to keep the ball in front and go tackle. That’s exactly what Texas did today.

Levi Lewis was checking down early and often, leading to a final line of 28-40 for 282 yards, 7.1 ypa, and one touchdown to zero picks. The Cajuns were throwing early and often but they couldn’t land any kill shots in the process. Meanwhile, Texas thwarted multiple long drives with red zone sacks and a forced fumble from a big hit by cornerback Darion Dunn in the flat (check down).

Those red zone stops allowed Texas to meet PK’s goal of holding the opponent under 20 points.

It wasn’t a perfect game, there will be issues to clean up, but they are playing sound football very quickly in this scheme. Jahdae Barron nearly had a pick from a deep 1/3 breaking on a pass and there’s going to be a lot of potential for this team to rack up sacks or interceptions (remember the adage on quarterback play) against less patient quarterbacks who don’t scramble or check down as well as Lewis.

Quick thought no. 5: Sarkisian goes 1-0

You could scarcely have scripted a better (realistic) opening game for Sarkisian and his staff. They won, and they won convincingly in a manner which allowed them to play a lot of players.

The overall strategy in the game was very strong. Defensively they were keen to make the most of their matchup against the Louisiana center with some run fronts and blitzes designed to attack the Cajuns. Offensively they mixed in some pro-style passing sets which really tore up the Louisiana defense.

Bijan Robinson and Roschon Johnson’s comfort with flexing out, as well as the comfort level of the tight ends doing the same, allowed Sark to mix in some empty formations which matched up Jordan Whittington on the interior defenders for the Cajuns. Whittington torched the Cajuns on third downs, converting four as Texas went 8-of-15 on the day (UL was 4-of-13). His ability to run crossing patterns and change direction was a real handful and Sark had him schemed into ideal spaces and matchups. It’s the same smart approach to maximizing the slot on third down Tom Herman brought, not lost in the coaching transition.

Texas was also good about rotating bodies early. When Billy Napier was chasing onside kicks in the second half it was much about keeping his defense off the field as it was an attempt to cut into the lead. The Cajuns ran out of gas trying to keep up with the Longhorns’ size and rotations in the heat.

It was a complete victory in every phase against a solid opponent. Next week we’ll see if they can do it again in a SEC atmosphere.

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