Steve Sarkisian addresses issue behind blowing leads

After his Texas Longhorns blew another double-digit lead on Saturday, head coach Steve Sarkisian addressed the issue after the game. The Longhorns let an 11-point lead in the third quarter slip away against the Baylor Bears. It is just the latest in a series of second-half meltdowns by Texas.  

Sarkisian believes his team is confident

In the postgame press conference, Sarkisian was asked about his team’s confidence in the second half of the games. 

“I don’t know if it’s so much that we don’t have confidence,” said Sarkisian. “I think that we do I think that we believe in what we do. You know one thing that we’ve been trying to stress is like life football throws adversity at you in every different shape, form, color, size, shape. You never know which way presents itself whether it’s injuries weather is turnovers you know whether it’s a call that doesn’t go your way. How we respond to it you know that’s the critical point, and that’s what we have to, in my opinion, improve on. We will continue to work on that aspect of it.

“I think that our group is pretty talented enough; We’ve got pretty good enough coaches not to get frazzled when things don’t go our way. I think we’re making some incremental progress. Clearly, we need to make more progress in that area to overcome and to get over this hump,” he continued.

Texas Longhorns running back Bijan Robinson also expressed frustration with his team after losing on the road to the Baylor Bears. It is the third time in as many weeks that the Longhorns have let a halftime lead slip away. Robinson, who is a leader on the offensive side of the ball, let his feelings be known after the game.

“We’re all frustrated,” said Robinson. “We have a lead at halftime and let it go. And that’s happened three Times Now. But we’re just trying to see the mistakes that happened, see everything that’s happening. We’re trying hard to get back up.”

Is it the Longhorns Psyche?

The reporters doubled down on the question of his team’s confidence, asking if it is a psyche issue. 

“It’s psyche right. It’s the mind, the spirit of a competitor. We got great competitors in our locker room. We want to make sure that their spirit really comes out, In everything that they do. Weather we have some people that are, maybe tensing up a little bit. It’s our job to get all of their spirit out of them.”

During this three-game losing streak, the Longhorns have fallen to the Big 12’s top three teams. After starting the Red River shootout against bitter rival Oklahoma on fire, the Longhorns quickly cooled off scoring just 10 points in the second half compared to 38 in the first. They lost that game in a close one 55-48. The following week against the Oklahoma State Cowboys, Texas took a 17-13 lead into the half. And similar to the Oklahoma loss and this week’s loss, the Longhorns offense sputtered in the second half. They were only able to score just one touchdown to begin the second half and then proceeded to be shut out the rest of the game. The Cowboys would go on to win the game 32-24.