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What we want to hear from Steve Sarkisian's Monday press conference following a close win against Kentucky

by: Evan Vieth20 hours ago
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Steve Sarkisian (Jordan Prather-Imagn Images)

It feels like we’ve had more Monday press conferences lingering with large questions and doubts than ones without them this season. When Steve Sarkisian takes to the podium at 11:30 today on Longhorn Network, more questions surrounding the offense’s ineffectiveness and the play of Arch Manning will be circling the head coach like vultures.

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After Ohio State, it was negative but not catastrophic. It was just one loss to the defending champs.

After San Jose State and specifically UTEP, the panic bells sounded. Arch Manning looked uncomfortable, as did the offense as a whole, and Texas looked like it was far behind the defense.

Sam Houston and the bye week bought hope, but that was quickly squashed in a loss to a coach on his way out of Gainesville. Even after two straight wins since then, I don’t think Texas fans have been at a lower point this season than where we are right now.

If we graciously count the bye as positive, that’s just three weeks out of eight with any sort of positivity surrounding the team.

This week feels like an important one for this team, but I think most fans have reached the acceptance phase of the season. This probably isn’t a College Football Playoff team. That’s okay, but we still have expectations.

The first thing we need to hear from head coach Steve Sarkisian is how he critiqued himself after this game. While fans can throw blame at the offensive line, its coach, or Manning, the root of all these problems returns to the same man.

Sarkisian can’t fix offseason mistakes in the middle of October, but he can change the way he operates as an offensive coordinator. There needs to be a certain self-reflection that he not only gives to himself but to the public.

At points on Saturday, I sat in the press conference room thinking there was a bit of Tom Herman in his speech. Was I around for the Herman era? Not quite, but I was also a college football fan during that time. I know what coaches at major programs failing to live up to expectations sound like.

That isn’t quite where we are with Sarkisian, but we need to know: What happened to the outside zone run game? What was that trick play call in the first quarter? What happened to the offense in the second half?

Secondly, we need key players on the offense to exude the trust in the culture that their defensive counterparts have been showing.

We all saw the clips of Michael Taaffe on Twitter. He came into our press room singing “Forever Young” by Alphaville, jolly as can be on Saturday. Manning didn’t quite share the demeanor.

When Taaffe and Colin Simmons show up to the press conference like they did, defending their offense and the culture they stand for, it should send a jolt of confidence into the rest of the team.

We saw DeAndre Moore do this, but we need real confidence in the process from players like Ryan Wingo, Trevor Goosby, and especially Manning, should all three make an appearance today.

Lastly, what did the players learn from this game?

In the mania of this game, I think a lot of us forgot that we are an SEC program now. There is no freebie against Kansas or even Texas Tech from the Herman years. Kentucky would probably be the 11th-best team in the Big Ten. They’d be competitive in the Big 12. That’s not to say this game shouldn’t have been closer, but you all saw the reactions on Twitter from other SEC fans.

Every SEC team experiences the uncomfortably close game against Kentucky in Lexington.

That doesn’t mean Texas is going to go on to beat Georgia and run the table, but it’s a very important learning experience for this young team. They won an away game!

What did these players learn from a game like this? It’s going to continue to happen in the SEC — you feel like you’re clearly the better team, but a well-thought-out game plan and a road crowd make it interesting. There’s going to be over 60,000 cowbells rattling in their ears at Davis Wade Stadium on Saturday.

We don’t want this to sound like cope. This Texas team is clearly not what we thought it was heading into the year. But there are also five games and six weeks left in the season. Every person in that organization is playing for their future, and that needs to be shown over the next few hours. This should be the biggest wake-up moment for this program since at least Georgia last year — and really TCU in 2022.

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