Steve Sarkisian provides updates following Saturday's scrimmage, Tuesday's practice
Inside Texas had its fair share of notes from sources coming from Saturday’s scrimmage, but thoughts from Longhorns head coach Steve Sarkisian weren’t available until today. In the zero-sum game that is practice or intrasquad scrimmages, one unit shining means another had to falter somewhere.
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That held true both in Sarkisian’s comments on Saturdays’ scrimmage and on Texas’ full-pad practice held Tuesday. He was reluctant to name either side of the ball as a “winner” of Saturday’s offense versus defense affair, but noted each had their moments during the scrimmage and ensuing practice.
Regarding his top two quarterbacks of Hudson Card and Quinn Ewers, Sarkisian mentioned they combined to complete over 70 percent of their passes on Saturday while also hitting on explosive plays, converting on red zone and third down situations, and not turning the ball over.
That lead him to chide his defense.
“On the flip side, I want more deflections,” Sarkisian said. “I want more knockdowns. I want more interceptions. I don’t know if you necessarily win a scrimmage when you’re the head coach, and I think both sides came out of there to work on to get better at. That’s the goal, that we’re constantly growing, that we’re able to identify areas with room for improvement, and then go attack them as a coaching staff, then see it carry over to the field. I thought we saw that today. The offense took care of the ball really well Saturday.”
Sarkisian claimed there were a few balls that went off some receivers’ fingertips over the weekend, but said there were arguably “one or two drops the whole day.” That efficient trend didn’t carry over to Tuesday’s practice, and the defense was able to create what they couldn’t manufacture during Saturday’s scrimmage to the tune of “three, maybe four” turnovers.
“Saturday was really good of making good decisions, protecting the ball, owning the football,” Sarkisian said. “Today, not so much. We had a couple of turnovers, and that side of me as a head coach is, defensively, we have to attack the football. We have to get after the ball and they took advantage of those opportunities when the ball was in the air, tip drill, whenever it was. We got the tips and overthrows and made those interceptions today.”
Another give-and-take area was in the screen game. According to Sarkisian, the screen game was successful for the offense over the weekend. In Tuesday’s practice, Sarkisian wasn’t sure if any were successful.
While the passing game had a strong Saturday, the run game didn’t fare as well.
“I thought we defended the run really well Saturday, which we want to do, we need to do, and we should be good at, and I thought we did that,” Sarkisian said. “I thought it made it difficult for us to run the football offensively. I think we had one explosive run and that came just about on the last play of the scrimmage. That was a real positive. On the flip side, I want to be able to run the ball better. That’s critical to our success, our ability to run the ball.”
Texas’ next practice is this Thursday, followed by another Saturday practice leading into the week of the spring game. The Longhorns will go next Tuesday, next Thursday, culminating spring practice with the Orange-White game on Saturday, April 23.
