Steve Sarkisian's five best decisions of the 2025 offseason

Texas head coach Steve Sarkisian has made a name for himself over the last few seasons as one of the best CEOs in all of college football.

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While that title doesn’t actually exist in the sport, college coaches have to operate much differently than NFL ones. In the NFL, a GM and scout team handle most roster decisions throughout the offseason. Between your final snap and your first OTA, there’s little decision-making to be done.

But in college, head coaches are in charge of everything. Even in an era where GMs are being paid millions of dollars to operate teams behind the scenes, the head coach is tasked with every single detail regarding his roster and the NIL process.

The best teams and coaches over the last 20 years—your Saban’s, Smart’s, Meyer’s, and Swinney’s—have all been fantastic CEOs, dominating at every stop in recruiting and roster management. The new era has mixed that up; Meyer chose the NFL’s bar scenes, Saban skipped town with the new rule changes, and Swinney used the portal for the first time this offseason. This has left a void near the top of the sport, one that Sarkisian is pushing to fill.

With multiple top-five recruiting classes and CFP semifinal appearances, all that’s left for Sark is the national championship. To do that in 2025, 2026, and onward, he had to make some big decisions, and these were the best of the offseason.

5. Prioritizing special teams immediately

This lands at number five because anyone with an understanding of the sport could realize that Texas had a special teams problem in 2025. No one could punt, and no one could hit a field goal. The Longhorns needed something new, which is part of the reason why Texas’ first transfer addition was a punter, Jack Bouwmeester.

Even with punter swiftly dealt with, Sarkisian spent the spring monitoring his kicker group and knew he had to once again dip in the portal. Enter Texas State leg Mason Shipley, exit Bert Auburn. Overall, Texas looks poised to jump from a bottom-20 ST unit to one of the best in the SEC, and the legs they brought in bring reliability and experience that last year’s crop did not have.

4. Saving and spending smartly in recruiting

Though this won’t affect how Texas performs in 2025, it was one of his most savvy moves. With the House Settlement looming large on programs and NIL collectives, teams got aggressive early in recruiting the 2026 class. This means dollar numbers being promised like you’ve never seen before, spent in bunches to try and secure as many blue-chip talents as possible early on.

In late spring and early summer, Texas lost a few notable recruits to these kinds of plays. Mark Bowman chose USC, KJ Edwards A&M, and of course the Felix Ojo Texas Tech deal sent waves through the CFB world. Despite ranking outside of the top-10 for the majority of that time, with fans clamoring for just one piece of good news, Sarkisian saved his money and stayed true to his process. Think Derek Cooper and Tyler Atkinson were cheap? That money was eventually used, and it brought in some extremely high-impact players. Now, Texas enters August with a top-five class.

3. Trusting his RB room

Entering the offseason, one of the five biggest needs for pretty much every staffer at Inside Texas was to add a running back in the transfer portal. And for good reason!

Texas had just two usable running backs in 2024, and one was off to the NFL. Even with Jerrick Gibson likely taking a leap, he, a beat-up Quintrevion Wisner, and a pair of freshmen were the only healthy legs in the room. Surely some sort of reinforcement was needed.

Fast forward to August, and Texas has both Christian Clark and CJ Baxter practicing at full strength with over three weeks to go before kickoff at Ohio State. Any extra running back would’ve just clogged this extremely talented room that will already need to fight to find touches for Clark and Gibson as the season progresses.

2. Continuing to add at defensive tackle

When Texas brought in Cole Brevard and Travis Shaw within their first five transfers of the 2025 portal window, they could’ve been satisfied there. They’d have a group of Brevard, Shaw, Alex January, Melvin Hills, and multiple talented freshmen. That could work for the season, right?

But it became clear that Sark’s goal wasn’t to play the raw Hills or freshmen early on, and he kept pursuing talent. Hero Kanu came late in the winter window, and Texas now had a strong four-man rotation to work with. All done, right?

Nope, Texas added two more transfers to the room, expanding to a six-to-seven-man rotation with Lavon Johnson and Maraad Watson joining the team. Watson, specifically, is the major get of the cycle—an athletic DT with three years of eligibility left who just started at Syracuse in the season past. As we’ve been reporting recently, it’s gone from a shaky room to one of the deepest on the team.

1. Adding Jack Endries and Emmett Mosley V to the receiving corps

It can be easy, especially with skill position players, to have an ego about your current roster. Everyone looks great on Hudl and in practice, and when you recruit the positions so well, it can seem like overkill to add to what felt like a talented room.

But as the winter turned into spring, Sarkisian felt something lacking amongst his pass catchers. He had just two returners from last year’s team who played any sort of meaningful minutes. His starting TE hadn’t caught a pass in college football yet. Instead of staying stubborn and holding firm with a lackluster group, Sark got aggressive. He targeted falling P5 programs Cal and Stanford to poach two of their best offensive players, Jack Endries and Emmett Mosley V.

Endries immediately has slotted into the TE1 role as if he’s been here for years, and Mosley V forms a fantastic quartet with Ryan Wingo, DeAndre Moore Jr., and Parker Livingstone in the receiving game. He can block, play inside and out, and has been praised as someone who is already adapting to the playbook well.

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If not for these two additions, Texas wouldn’t be a favorite to win the national championship. The safety nets for Arch Manning and the high ceiling for passing game production make this his biggest move of the offseason.