New players, new rules have the Texas Longhorns confident and coherent entering 2022

ARLINGTON, Texas — Year one leading a college football program is rarely easy. Head coaches are faced with a seemingly endless number of decisions, many which can impact not just the first year on a new job but the years following. Texas head coach Steve Sarkisian was no different ahead of the 2021 season. When he took over for Tom Herman, he had to choose between keeping some parts of his predecessor’s way of doing things or running the program how he wanted to in every way.

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He decided to go with the latter knowing full well it might cost him buy-in with players, even key ones, used to a certain routine. He knew it might cost him wins early in his tenure, and it did during Texas’ 5-7 campaign. It beat the alternative for Sarkisian, who of late has taken every opportunity to explain how his team is exponentially closer, more tight-knit — more of a team — compared to this time last year.

“When you come out on the other side of it, man, now you’ve got a team that has really bought into what you want to do, and a staff really bought into what you want to do, and a roster that is built the way you want it built to go achieve the success you want to achieve,” Sarkisian said Thursday at Big 12 Media Days at AT&T Stadium. “I think that’s where we’re at year two.”

Simple circumstances have also benefitted Sarkisian in his efforts to bring the Longhorns closer together. The football program is now in the completed south end zone facility where coaches simply need to walk down the hall to meet with players, and vice versa. COVID-19 restrictions in 2021 that prevented the level of interpersonal interaction necessary for player-player and player-coach bonds to be built were another barrier toward the effort of creating cohesiveness. Those are no longer a worry.

Sarkisian himself did plenty to create an environment where the only thing that seems to be emanating from the program is good news. He brought in 35 new scholarship players who bought into his vision before ever stepping foot on campus as a student-athlete, including several five-star offensive lineman and highly-touted Ohio State quarterback transfer Quinn Ewers.

Ewers, the linemen, and the rest of the 2022 class are a few of the 57 freshman or sophomore players on the roster. That’s two-thirds of the scholarship player total. Bringing that many players together is tough. One way of doing it? Overcoming difficult challenges as a group.

One such challenge? The Texas heat.

“Some days we’re out here crying after workouts because we work so hard and we understand what we want for this season, especially because it’s 107 out here every other day,” Longhorn running back Bijan Robinson said. “It’s definitely a grind. I love it.”

Robinson said he leads a team prayer after some workout days for those who want to participate. For those not interested in that activity, he makes sure to still be there for them in other ways in order to be a leader for the entire team.

Those types of activities do more than foster player-player trust, it helps with coach-player trust, too. Robinson mentioned any time he messes up running backs coach Tashard Choice is on his case. Choice just as quickly studies scripture with Robinson, fellow team leader Roschon Johnson, and other backs in his position group.

There is one more way Sarkisian has built a group that had him walking around Jerry World on Thursday with an air of confidence after an under-.500 season. This year, new NCAA rules allow for him and his assistants to have up to two hours per week of skill instruction using a football with the team. That does wonders for a roster with so many players who are just now getting used to some of the rigors of college football.

“Getting them comfortable, getting them more acclimated with this offense and the defense, it was very important we had that summer that we’re doing right now because we’re learning at a very fast pace,” Robinson said.

Sarkisian was just as thankful for the newfound opportunity.

“We can do meetings all day long, but at the end of the day we’re football coaches and they are football players,” Sarkisian said. “None of us really like sitting in a small room on a whiteboard. We like to be on the grass doing what we love to do, and I think players learn better that way in this day and age. I think they like being out there.”

He continued: “I think there’s something about camaraderie that way that they’re seeing guys getting coached and then improving on something we they know we’ve placed an emphasis on for them. There’s a lot of value to it. I’m glad the rule got changed the way it did, and I think we’ve taken pretty good advantage of it.”

The additional time learning the scheme and spending time with teammates isn’t just beneficial for the newcomers. Even old vets have taken a liking to it.

Consider Ovie Oghoufo, who was one of a handful of transfers into Texas ahead of the 5-7 season. Not only did he have to acclimate himself to a new locker room, he had to acclimate to a new system at the same time.

He enters this year with a grasp of the defense after a year in the program, but he found nothing wrong with the opportunity for additional reps in the summer.

“For us older guys, it helps us understand our scheme a lot better, understanding what my safety is doing and what our interior D-lineman are doing,” Oghoufo said. “It helps us understand why our job in this particular scheme or this particular defense, or even on offense, why that is so important.”

So much of what makes first years at a new program difficult took place in Austin ahead of Sarkisian’s first season. In preparation for Sarkisian’s second season, a confluence of factors have helped the Longhorns charge into training camp with confidence rarely seen from a team coming off a 5-7 season.

New rules help. Many new players help. Fifty-seven freshmen or sophomores are on the Forty Acres to make 5-7 a thing of the past. After splintering at times during the losing season, the Longhorns are charging together hoping to restore the program to winning ways.

“I love the feeling of it because from last year to this year, you can feel a change as a team,” Robinson said.