IT Today: Gary Patterson and the value of analysts

Welcome to Inside Texas Today! On weekdays, Inside Texas Today will provide the latest on Texas Longhorns sports from around the Forty Acres. This morning, what Texas head coach Steve Sarkisian and TCU head coach Sonny Dykes said about Gary Patterson and the value of analysts in a program.

Here’s the Tuesday, July 19, 2022 edition.

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Sonny Dykes was fired by Cal on January 8, 2017 following his fourth season in Berkeley. Needing a job, he sought a role closer to home in Texas and found one at TCU under former Horned Frog head coach Gary Patterson.

Dykes spent the 2017 season with TCU, one that saw the Horned Frogs compete for the Big 12 championship and win 11 games. After the regular season was completed, Dykes took the SMU head coaching job left vacant by Chad Morris.

The experience as an analyst was a new one for Dykes considering he had been a part of the head coaching ranks dating back to 2010. The step back after Cal let him go helped him eventually move forward in his career.

“I had a chance to go work with Coach Patterson, and really what I wanted to do was go someplace that had had a tradition of playing great defensive football and wanted to see what his approach was,” Dykes said at Big 12 Media Days. “I was fortunate enough to get hired on with Coach Patterson in 2017, was part of a great team. It was an 11-3 team that year that played in the Big 12 Championship game, and just learned a ton.”

What value does Dykes believe analysts offer?

“I think analysts in a lot of ways provide perspective,” Dykes said. “When you look around, you look at a lot of the analysts that have gone to Alabama through the years, a lot of those guys are former head coaches, and they go and they have a chance to learn from Nick Saban and they have a chance to probably get their confidence back in a lot of ways. Because there’s a lot of good football coaches that go places and aren’t successful for a variety of reasons, and those guys are outstanding coaches. Sometimes it’s not the right fit, sometimes it’s not the right circumstance. So those guys can go and learn.”

One such analyst who had the chance to learn from Saban? Texas head coach Steve Sarkisian. The Longhorns’ second-year coach often credits Saban for helping resurrect his career. While Sarkisian was able to take the Texas job due to his exploits as the Crimson Tide’s offensive coordinator, he first joined the Alabama program in 2016 after his dismissal from USC.

Texas doesn’t have a bunch of former head coaches and coordinators in the analyst room like Alabama does, but they do have one special assistant to the head coach that drew a lot of attention at Big 12 Media Days in Patterson.

Patterson, a defensive-minded coach who received assistance from the offensive-minded Dykes in 2017, now helps the offensive-minded Sarkisian in the Texas program. His help isn’t limited to just one area. Patterson helps across the board.

“I don’t know if there’s just one specific thing,” Sarkisian said. “I think sometimes with a guy like Gary, who gameplanned against me last year, one of the biggest things I’ve learned is just how he looked at our offense and what he would do to try to stop us. He’s a big picture thinker, and that helps me say ‘well, we’ve got to make sure we are checking off these boxes so people can’t say we’re one dimensional when we do this or when we do that.'”

Even Texas EDGE Ovie Oghoufo has reaped the benefits of having Patterson in Austin.

“Wonderful defensive coach,” Oghoufo said at Big 12 Media Days. “I wasn’t really familiar with him before he got here, and I’m learning the benefits that he’s had, the little tricks, the little things he teaches us, the little techniques, the little drills he has us doing. He just comes in, drops his knowledge, and moves on to the next position group. It’s amazing. It works.”

All three of Dykes, Patterson, and Sarkisian know what analysts offer to a program. Sarkisian’s program in Austin is now a beneficiary of Patterson working on the Forty Acres as an analyst.