Steve Sarkisian admits regrets from Oklahoma State, TCU games

Texas definitely had an up and down year on the football field. Overall, the program made progress in Steve Sarkisian’s second year at the helm, winning several big games while losing a few that are still keeping the Texas coach up late at night.

At his press conference following the Longhorns’ decisive victory over Baylor to close out the regular season, Sark was asked what details in those losses he still dwells on. To which he gave a lengthy response pointing to specific game plan decisions and in-game executions that he wishes the team could have back, starting with the TCU loss.

“Yeah, against TCU I just wish we would have played better, quite frankly,” Sarkisian admitted. “I wish I’d done a better job of preparing ourselves to play. Whether it was a psyche thing, whether it was just an execution thing, we just didn’t play very good in that game and that’s disappointing. I would have liked us to play good football and see what would have happened, and we just didn’t play great offensive football that day.”

Then, he moved on to discuss the sources behind the Texas Tech and OSU losses, taking the blame for himself.

“I think in the Tech and Oklahoma State games — again, I’m my toughest critic. I know you guys like to critique me but I’ve tried to value myself as my toughest critic. Wish I would have found a way to run the football better in the second half in those two games. To just to try to control the game a little bit more to where our defense wasn’t playing so many snaps. Because I think the accumulation of the snaps they had to play in those two games caught up to us, to where missed tackles became a factor in that game at some really critical moments defensively.

“I wish we could have controlled it a little bit more offensively in the second half to minimize some of the snaps they had to play and maybe we make a couple of those tackles that change the outcome of the game. But, then again, that’s self-criticism on me and I’m okay with doing that. Hopefully we’re better for it moving forward.”

While Steve Sarkisian clearly has trouble letting losses go, he is happy to see how the team adjusted after those missteps to finish the season strong.

“I think it showed up in the Iowa State game. I think it showed up just this past weekend against Baylor, where we were able to run the ball, minimize some of the snaps our defense played.”