What I want to hear in Steve Sarkisian's pre-Florida press availability

The Texas Longhorns have emerged out of the bye with a much-needed break, and even a spot ahead on the AP Poll.

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While Texas head coach Steve Sarkisian won’t be answering, or caring, about his spot on a poll or the rest of the SEC, it was an extremely impactful weekend around the league. It feels like the first time all season where Texas wasn’t negatively one of the biggest storylines of the weekend.

Instead of hating on play-calling or Arch Manning’s antics, we saw Georgia fall to Alabama once again, LSU look ugly against Ole Miss, and the firing of Arkansas’ Sam Pittman.

While Florida’s Billy Napier is likely next on the chopping block, he seems to have made it to the Texas matchup coming around this Saturday. Florida’s play has led this game to not be played at night, and both teams exit a bye in very different spots.

So what is there to know about the Texas Longhorns after a week without football?

Who’s healthy?

This is everyone’s biggest question entering SEC play. Texas has had double-digit players miss games this season due to injury, but from what we’ve heard from our own sources and intel, the injury bug shouldn’t be too serious for this team.

Emmett Mosley (exists!) practiced for the first time on Thursday and is sure to be a topic of discussion. It also seemed like most of the precautions against Sam Houston were just that—precautions—in playing injured DBs and Alex January. We expect all to be back.

The big question marks come at RB. Can Texas expect both starting RBs to be healthy for the first SEC game of the year? Can they even expect one? Sarkisian is going to be asked pretty early on about the health of his team.

Position Battles

Sarkisian is not going to bluntly say someone has overtaken another player on his depth chart. He’ll shut down any sort of question asking about who will get more snaps or who has won a battle, but there were obviously positions he keyed in on.

Who is RB3 (or 2 depending on health) going forward? What about the TE2 in 12 personnel? How many EDGEs will be in rotation, and is there any shakeup in the cornerback room?

He won’t give many hints, but he often does stick to his word when bringing up players. If he brought up a name unprompted, it would be for a reason. You saw that with Graceson Littleton this year and Jelani McDonald last.

If he singles out someone like Lance Jackson or Nick Townsend for their practices this past week, you can almost book it that those players have left the bye week with a higher spot in the rotation.

Stick with the process, or begin turning it up?

Sarkisian is a pure process coach. He’s preached that idea since he got here.

“I was practicing the same way when I was going 5-7 as I am with a College Football Playoff team,” or something along those lines has been said a hundred times before.

But there obviously has to be some change year over year. Sarkisian entered this year with his most unique challenge yet: take a young team and bring them to the home of the reigning national champion in the first week of the season.

He probably prepared for Ohio State a little differently, which had trickle-down effects on the next three weeks.

But Sarkisian has gotten his reset week and can now create a specific plan for how to attack SEC play. Is that the same identity and style of coaching as always, or have they ramped up the intensity? Is he asking more from certain coaches, leaders, or individuals on his team?

This idea feels almost imaginary to us onlookers who don’t attend these practices, but it really is important. What is different about this team, and the way they are coached, to assure they start SEC play better than they started the regular season?