Steve Sarkisian provides update on CJ Baxter, evaluates Texas run game

Texas coach Steve Sarkisian provided a positive update on freshman running back CJ Baxter during his press conference on Monday.

Sarkisian shared that Baxter is back practicing after leaving Saturday’s opener against Rice in the second quarter with an injury.

“CJ’s back at practice today, which was a positive,” Sarkisian said.

CJ Baxter had five carries for 38 yards, which is an average of 7.6 yards per carry, prior to leaving the game. He averaged the most yards per carry on the Longhorns team for a rushing attack that produced mixed results.

In total, Texas had 39 carries for 158 yards. Jaydon Blue led the way — rushing 10 times for 55 yards, while Jonathon Brooks had 12 carries for 52 yards.

Sarkisian also shared what he thought of the Texas running game on Saturday.

“Run game wise, you know, there were moments when it looked really good and I thought we started to find a little bit of rhythm there,” Sarkisian said. “But my evaluation of the run game might be different than others. It’s, ‘How do we run the ball when they know we’re going to run the ball?’ That’s really critical. And that’s something we take a lot of pride in in our team-run periods – the emphasis in which we do it.”

Texas was just average in that category against Rice.

The Longhorns had some solid gains on the ground, for sure, but they also had 11 rushes go for 1 yard or less. That includes quarterback Quinn Ewers being sacked a pair of times.

Sarkisian gives credit to Rice for entering the game with a good plan but believes his team needs to do a better job in the run game moving forward.

“I thought some of the errors that occurred in the run game — why things weren’t as clean as we maybe would’ve liked – we didn’t trust our training well enough. And that’s something that we need to improve upon,” Sarkisian said. “We can’t guarantee what every front’s going to be, or what every pressure and line stunt’s going to be. So we’ve got to trust our training and use our fundamentals and use our techniques and improve upon those, to make sure that regardless of what the look is that we get, that we block it accordingly and that we do it with a level of physicality that is up to our standard.”

Texas needs to improve in a hurry. Up next, the Longhorns travel to face Alabama in Tuscaloosa in one of the biggest games of the 2023 college football season.