Insight from Steve Sarkisian's Tuesday post-practice availability
Steve Sarkisian spoke to the media after last night’s fourth practice of the pre-season. Today, the Horns have off.
Sark says he’s breaking the pre-season regiment into four-segments.
The team will get back on the field Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. And then they will scrimmage this coming Saturday.
Circle the Saturday scrimmage on your calendar.
While Sark continues to say that Casey Thompson and Hudson Card are “both doing the right things”, we all know the stakes are raised in scrimmage settings for every position battle, but quarterbacks moreso.
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Sarkisian was pounded with questions after practice yesterday, not just about the progress of the team as a whole, but specific players, too.
A couple of his responses on individual players are particularly noteworthy:
– Sark spoke at length about Troy Omeire. Omeire is extremely gifted physically, but is returning from injury.
It was clear from Sark’s answer that the coaching staff is still waiting for Omeire to really trust himself on the field, to “let it go” as Sark put it. While not denigrating Omeire, Sark made it clear that the wideout still had a lot of mental progress that needs to be made.
It was not a resounding approval Omeire, one where it seemed that he had a starting spot in the offense locked down.
My take is pretty simple: anyone who is confident in Omeire being a starter this season is currently off base. Sure, it’s possible, even likely that Omeire starts, but it’s clear Sark wants his receivers playing with more fire and urgency than what Omeire is currently producing on the practice field.
Perhaps the staff gets it out of Omeire, or not. But whatever Sark is seeing right now, he knows he needs more from the position than he’s getting.
– I found Sark’s answer about DeMarvion Overshown, or as he referred him to a “DMo”, to be revealing as well.
Sark clearly couldn’t say enough about how excited he was for Overshown to be in the starting lineup. He emphasized Overshown’s speed and quickness, as well as his awareness and knack in pass defense.
It was clear to anyone who listened that Sark is a big fan. Furthermore, Sark said that Overshown’s absence in the spring understandably left him and the staff with questions because they didn’t get to work with him in the defense. But not anymore.
– Yep, Steve Sarkisian responded to a Xavier Worthy question, too.
While Sark and others around the program continue to talk about Worthy’s mental approach and ability to turn speed and athleticism into quantifiable on-field traits that will show up in games, there is one thing Sark makes very clear.
And that is this: when you first see Worthy, he’s what you expect of an electric athlete.
Photo by Shane Ware for Inside Texas
