Welcome to (mock) game week for the Texas Longhorns
The Texas Longhorns will practice Monday morning on August 18, just like they’ll practice on Monday morning for the next four months during the 2025 season. Then they’ll go through Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday practices this week, just like they will ahead of games versus Ohio State, San Jose State, UTEP, Sam Houston, and so on.
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This mock game week for a Steve Sarkisian program is an important one, as it leaves the training camp schedule behind and gets the players accustomed to the Sunday through Saturday routine that will be celebrated, scrutinized, and documented over the next four months.
“We’ll get into a mock week,” Sarkisian said Saturday. “We’ll treat next week as if we’re in school even though we haven’t started school so these guys can start to find their routine on a regular basis on what a regular work week would look like when school starts the following week.”
That applies to the head coach, too. Sarkisian’s normal weekly press conference is on Mondays at around 11:30 a.m. He’ll speak to the press today around that time in order to get into his own game week routine.
The end of the mock game week will feature a mock game. In years past, Sarkisian’s program has suited up in the locker room, run out of the tunnel for pregame warmups, and conducted a scrimmage. The “mock game” gives the Longhorns one more opportunity to show their development in game-like scenarios but also prepares the team for certain situations.
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What happens if the starting left guard loses his shoe and needs to come out for a play? Who goes in? What if Texas has zero timeouts and has 25 seconds to kick a field goal? How can they get it done?
“We try to create routines and habits in our daily lives so they’re not having to pick and choose and wonder what today looks like,” Sarkisian said. “There’s a reason we practice in the morning. There’s a reason we get ’em up and they’re here first thing in the morning, they eat breakfast, we go do football, then from here they go to class. It’s part of the cycle, then they come back in the afternoon. Once they find that groove in their cycle, it makes life a little bit easier. That’s what this week is for.”
Of course, there will be additional solidification of particular spots on the depth chart as a result of these practices. Texas is doing some Ohio State prep, but the greater goal is to get the players used to what their life will look like for the rest of 2025.
“We won’t necessarily just make that week all about Ohio State because there are some things that we have to work on and improve upon,” Sarkisian said. “There will be a fair amount of work done. If you think of a bowl game where you have two weeks sometimes to prepare, or a playoff game, you can start the beginning stages of an install. At the same time, we need some training camp work that we need to do against good on good to keep our level of intensity and physicality up the right way.”
