Steve Sarkisian remains reserved over a potential spread offense takeover

From an outside view, Texas’ offense clearly has a style of play that suits itself best.

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The Longhorns have really only scored 91 points in five games against Power Four teams this season (we’re awarding the touchdown against Kentucky to special teams), and a solid chunk of that has come in three total quarters: 14 points against the Florida Gators in a loss and 24 points between the fourth quarter and overtime against Mississippi State on Saturday. That’s 42% of scoring over 20 quarters and 2 OT periods in two quarters and an OT.

Those two games had very similar scenarios: Texas was in desperate need of points, attempting to come back on the road. While it wasn’t perfect against Florida, the spread passing game truly blossomed against Mississippi State.

Texas QB Arch Manning looked the most comfortable he has all year despite another poor offensive line performance, and Texas’ pass catchers had easily their best game to date. Even RB Quintrevion Wisner was contributing in the short pass and unexpected run game.

The Longhorns clearly found something last week with Manning and the rest of this offense: spread out the defense, use three wide receivers, and either look for deep shots or quick passes on non–play-action passes.

But that hasn’t been what Texas head coach Steve Sarkisian wants for his team. The Longhorns’ most complete game this year was against Oklahoma, where a power-run, 12-personnel (two tight ends) scheme was prevalent. The problem is, Texas has looked poor on offense in that look over the last two weeks.

They barely scored against Kentucky, and Texas faltered in the middle 16 minutes of that game against the Bulldogs, attempting to make big plays on play action and running the ball ineffectively.

Naturally, there’s been a call for higher usage of the spread game, but when Sarkisian was asked about it, he mostly skated around the idea.

“Every year you have issues, you know? I’m sure this time last year I was talking about something else, like something we needed to clean up or get better at,” Sarkisian said. “I think that’s our job as coaches — to identify where your issues are, and then try to put a spotlight on them and improve upon them. I say it all the time: we as coaches get what we emphasize. So if we want to emphasize starting better in the game, we have to look at maybe the game plan itself.”

Of course, Sarkisian isn’t going to blurt out his direct game plan for the Vanderbilt game. Clark Lea would like nothing more than to hear exactly how Sarkisian will approach it. But this still sounded a bit noncommittal from the signal-caller in Austin.

“We’ve got to wake up early and get ourselves ready to go. And we’re gonna have to play from the beginning,” Sarkisian said about Saturday’s 11 a.m. game, answering the question about the spread. “This is going to be a four-quarter game. That doesn’t mean you have to wait for the fourth quarter. We need to play all four quarters with the right sense of urgency.”

This can be taken one of two ways.

On one hand, you’d like to hear Sarkisian agree that his team found something in that fourth quarter that it hadn’t really had all year. That fourth quarter was the best 15 minutes of the Texas season, but it didn’t feel like the coach was eager to say he learned something from it.

On the other hand, he was never going to outright say he’ll adopt a more spread-focused play style. His unwillingness to bring it up may just be him trying to keep it under wraps and not reveal his plan, which could start with Texas playing heavily out of 11-personnel.

There’s also the Matthew Caldwell wrinkle, as Texas is potentially without Manning for this week’s game. What is Caldwell most comfortable in? What will give Texas the best chance at running the ball and winning the time of possession?

If you were hoping to hear that Texas is flipping the game plan to feature more of what we saw on Saturday, I’ve got bad news for you. As it usually is with Sarkisian in his presser, you’ll have to wait until Saturday to truly see how he will operate his football team.