Everything Steve Sarkisian said on his Thursday Zoom ahead of the Mississippi State

With just two days separating now and Texas’ matchup in Starkville against Mississippi State, Texas head coach Steve Sarkisian took the stand to talk about his 5-2 ballclub.

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Opening statement:

“This group is a very resilient group, and they have really grown together as a team. And so for us, for the fourth straight week, to get on an airplane, stay in not our team hotel, I think one, it’s brought us closer than we were at the start of the season, and that’s what’s going to be needed. This is a little bit unprecedented, to go on the road for four straight weeks into a hostile environment, and we’re going to need to stay really well connected as a football team, and I credit our guys for doing that, because that’s what it’s going to take. This is going to be a heck of a game. This is a good football team. The record could be much better than it is. They lost two heartbreakers. So we know this is going to be a big challenge, and we’re going to need all 74 guys who make this trip to contribute to our success.”

Sarkisian was then asked a question about facing road games in his career. The reporter pointed out that the only time in Sarkisian’s coaching career that he’s gone on the road for three straight weeks was in 2017 with the Atlanta Falcons. Sarkisian was asked about what he remembered from that trip and the toll it took on his team.

“I don’t remember as much. I do recall, with Dan Quinn as our head coach, he liked to go two nights in advance, and so that felt really long, because we were in hotels two nights instead of one. I remember the Jets. It was pouring rain. I remember in New England, Tom Brady got the better of us that night, and I remember playing a pretty competitive game at Carolina. Those are the challenges of every year, every schedule was different, and we don’t get to control that. All we can do is play the hand you’re dealt and then embrace the hand that you’re dealt. And this was our schedule. And I think our players, to their credit, have done a tremendous job, and our staff has done a great job of embracing this challenge and and I think it’s showing. If we can get out of this thing three and one, that’s great, especially when we drop the first one and then, to be able to bounce back. But again, it takes connectivity. It takes your ability and focus throughout the week to get your rest. And we all fly on planes. That takes its toll on you. You get back late at night, you’ve got to go back to work. And so I think getting your rest is vitally important, and then leaning into the guy next to you, that he’s got your back and that you’re accountable to him. Because, like I said, you need everybody when you go on the road.”

Sarkisian on CJ Baxter

“I thought he’s looked good in practice, and I thought he’s gotten better and stronger as the week’s gone on. You know, the soft tissue injuries, to your point, are tricky, because the player coming off of them, they’re trying to figure out, can they really push you? And so, I credit our medical staff and the rehab process, because we pushed him really good over the last week and a half before this week, and to get him his confidence right to where he felt like he could go. And I felt like from Monday, Tuesday to Wednesday to today, his comfort level of pushing that to a degree to where he felt comfortable that he could really play at a high level, which was important. You know, we’re obviously fortunate to have Tre (Wisner) to combo with Cedric. And then, like I said, Christian Clark’s really been coming on. And so again, I don’t envision C4 walking out of there with 20-something carries, but if he can play in this game and be effective and be an integral part in some critical situations, on regular downs, but especially in some special situations, I think that would be really beneficial for our team. I think it’d be beneficial for Tre to take some of the load off of him and keep him fresh for four quarters. But also from a leadership standpoint, Cedric is a great leader, and the guys really respond to him. And so the fact that he gets to put his uniform on this Saturday and play with those guys, I think, is going to mean a lot to him, that he’s not going to be a street clothes on the sidelines.”

Bringing the team closer together.

“I think a lot of that process begins in the summer, right? We do a lot of that Culture Wednesday work throughout the summer. I think that process builds throughout training camp. And that is kind of that family tough love, because there’s no opponent, so there’s some friction there. And then when the season begins, you start to grow them back together again. And you know, part of the things we do is exercises every Friday, before we go to our team hotel or before we go on the road, and we do culture activities, and we do things that should naturally pull them closer together, where they’re writing note cards of appreciation to somebody or inspirational note cards to another guy on the team. We try to get out of ourselves, and we try to serve others. In return, you get what you’re supposed to get, and we really preach, through team successes, when the individual accolades, awards and honors come from, and so the better the team does, the more recognition our guys get.”

The difference between this year’s Mississippi State game and last year’s

“We had a lot of different faces last year as opposed to this year. You know, it’s different. It’s a different group. I think, for them, they’ve evolved as a defense, too. They’re a much deeper defense than that is playing a lot of players, especially in the front. They’ve evolved schematically. They’re not, you know, playing the same exact style. They have some principles that remain the same a year ago, but they evolved. They’re playing a lot more confidently, especially in the back end. Their ability to attack the football at Mississippi State definitely jumps off the tape. They create interceptions, they attack the ball.”

How his offense is different

“And so from our end, I think one of the things that stood out, I thought the protection for Arch (Manning) was really what the guys did a great job a year ago. We ran the ball effectively, and we’re able to utilize the passing game off of those two things, but also the Arch made a couple of critical throws. We’re in an empty formation, they zero blitz, and he throws an absolute strike to DeAndre Moore. And so you can lean into some of those connections from last year where he has DeAndre on another touchdown earlier in the game or later in the game. So look, there’s some things to lean into. There’s some looks that we can hold on to from a year ago. But then there’s some newness, right? We have new faces. We have new people up front, and there’s some newness to some of the schemes and the personnel that they have on defense, especially on the front.”

Baxter in pass protection

“I think C4, obviously, he’s a very smart player. He’s very cerebral, but he’s also very calming. I think he’s actually calming for Tre Wisner as well. He sees the game, he understands the protections. He can talk through things. And so whether it’s he or Tre, I think there is a there’s a calming effect that he provides. For the offensive line, it’s trust and not riding the emotional wave.”

“We’d all love to play a perfect game. You’re gonna make a mistake. Well, that doesn’t mean you have to make another mistake. And so the ability to move on to the next play. Be clear minded. Focus on the task at hand, I think is something for the offensive line. But I think two, we’ve got to get movement at the line of scrimmage in the run game. I think those two things go hand in hand for us.

Sarkisian on sports gambling and recent NCAA rules

“I totally disagree with the NCAA on this, and I was very vocal about it. Here we are in an era where we have revenue sharing and NIL publicity rights, and so the players now have money, so now let’s give them the freedom to take that money and gamble it away. That makes no sense to me when we’re in a space of educating young people, and part of educating young people is what to do with their money, and to say, Okay, now you can gamble on pro sports. To me, that does not make any sense. From a logical standpoint, and again, this isn’t something that I’ve been shy about. I’ve been very supportive of the other side of it. It was a lot easier before for us when they couldn’t gamble at all, because that was an easy way for us to educate them, and that was an easy way for us to penalize them and do the things that we need to do. Now we do have to put guardrails up. Now we do have to manage this from a simple standpoint of,’Well, I’m allowed to, so how can you tell me I can’t?’ Now it’s more about education, even more education than we were doing before. But I’m disappointed in this ruling that this is what we decided to do with our young people, when they could be doing something really substantial in their lives, for their own lives, and for their family’s lives. So let’s be clear about that. They’re not all going to gamble, but some are. And is that what we were trying to accomplish with this? And I get it, it was probably hard to police before. I think they just made it even harder for all of us to police now that, ‘Well, he’s on Draft Kings. Well, what was he gambling on?’ Well, if they just can’t be on DraftKings at all, then we don’t have to worry about it. But now we have to dig deeper to figure out what somebody is gambling
on.”

Cowbells

“First of all, I think it’s an awesome atmosphere.I think that’s one of the coolest things about this league, is you go on the road and everybody’s got their own niche, right? Everybody’s got their own thing that is unique to their home game environment. And for Mississippi State to have the cowbells. I think that is a really cool thing for college football that our guys get to experience. Quite frankly, hopefully we can have a little less cowbell ringing going on Saturday, but we do pipe it in. We’ve got cow bells ringing at practice, and again, it tasks you to stay focused. To me, I think that’s more so than it’s just the overbearing noise. It’s the focus of hearing those bells ringing. So, you know, we think we’ve addressed it and done a good job this week of handling it from a pre snap perspective, but staying focused is one of the key ingredients to this.”

Sarkisian’s message to young players experiencing adversity

“I think the first thing we try to do is to coach them really good in practice, right? Whether that’s in spring ball, training camp, or in season. Letting them see living examples of other players who maybe had the growing pains that were in the same stage that they were in maybe a year ago or two years ago. ‘All right. Well, here I am now.’ I think part of it is, a lot of the players we sign are high-level players, but they signed here as high-level players because they also knew we’ve been producing high-level players, and we’ve been winning at a high level, and it’s something. Understandably, there’s going to be frustrations along the way, whether it’s playing time, whether it’s learning a system, or a certain play or a scheme. But yet, Man, that guy who’s maybe two years ahead of me, he’s got it figured out. What is he doing? How do I be more like him? Am I one of the first guys in the building, or am I coming in right before the team meeting is about to start? Am I staying late after practice to work on something? Or am I running out of there because I got somewhere to go, right? Am I coming to an extra meeting with my position coach? Or am I never around upstairs in our building? But wait, that guy who’s an All-American and all-conference player, that’s what he does. So maybe we need to be more like him, and so we try to use living examples of guys on our team. But we never stop developing. We never stop pushing. We never stop coaching. It doesn’t matter if a guy’s a frontline starter or developmental player, a scout team player, we’re coaching these guys constantly, and the beauty of it for us is we’re seeing a lot of growth in a lot of players, and maybe we aren’t going to reap the benefits of that right now, but surely down the road, we will, because a lot of our guys are improving.”

Opening scripts

“Remember when you guys used to go to your grandma’s house at Christmas? And the Christmas tree would light up. You plug it in and it looked beautiful. There’d be that one light that was blinking, one light that was out. You’re like, you can’t get your eyes off that one blinking light. I feel like that’s been the issue. And then you replace the bulb, and you fix it, and then the next light starts blinking. I wish I could say it’s one thing, or one group, or one player, which isn’t the case. We just haven’t gotten all 11 to execute it all exactly the way we want it. And part of those blinking lights, I’ll say, is me too. I’m okay with that. I’m all right with that, but I just want to plug in this Christmas tree Saturday at 3:15 and all the lights come on and none of them are blinking.”

On Blake Shapen

“He’s very efficient. I think he’s got a real comfort level in Coach Lebby’s offense. And you know, they’ve grown into it where they’ve got two speed guys on the perimeter, with Brenen Thompson and (Anthony) Evans. They’ve got physical runners. And so it’s a matchup-driven offense. He operates the tempo really well. They’re going to go fast. He doesn’t get out of sorts. He’s very composed, and he finds completions, and then he’s got enough usage of his legs to extend plays and to extend drives using his legs, and so I just think he’s a good fit. He’s playing good football for them. He’s operating at a high level, and they’re a challenge offensively, because of the splits and the tempo that they operate in, but B, his ability to distribute the ball.”