Steve Sarkisian gives his overall impression of debut as Texas coach

Steve Sarkisian couldn’t have asked for a better debut as head coach of the Texas Longhorns. Texas won 38-18 over Louisiana, and the Longhorns offense performed well with relative ease. Sarkisian was glad to get out to a hot start as Texas’ head coach.

Sarkisian: ‘There’s nothing like winning’

The Texas head coach was happy to see his team come out of the gates to play a clean football game with minimal mistakes. After not having fans in stadiums last season, opening weekend was a big moment for everyone involved. Having a normal atmosphere and a full stadium added to the excitement for Sarkisian in his Texas debut.

“I loved it, man. There’s nothing like winning, I’ll tell you that much,” Sarkisian told reporters after the win. “We put in a lot of work whether it’s the coaching staff, the players or the strength and conditioning staff. There’s a lot of moving parts that goes into putting on a performance at a football game. There’s a lot of people from staffing the stadium, and we were down some people there. Just from the administration, the coaching staff, our players, I was pleased just with the environment. I loved it.”

Texas played a strong, clean offensive game

The Texas offense had 435 total yards with zero turnovers. Quarterback Hudson Card completed 14 of 21 pass attempts for 224 yards and two touchdowns. Star running back Bijan Robinson rushed for 103 yards and a touchdown on 20 carries. Robinson also caught four passes for 73 yards and a touchdown. Sarkisian was thrilled with Texas’ lack of mistakes on the offensive side of the ball.

“In the end as a coach to come out and have zero turnovers on offense, taking care of the ball. We had a couple errors from a penalty standpoint that I think we can clean up on special teams and then a few holds on offense I think we’ll clean up,” Sarkisian said. “But for the most part, one of the concerns going into a first game, more teams lose these openers than teams win the game. We wanted to make sure we weren’t going to go out and lose the game. We were going to try to play as clean of a football game as we could. Taking care of the ball, taking care of the line of scrimmage, take our shots when they were there. We didn’t hit them today, but I thought we took a few. But that’s okay, we’re going to stay aggressive.

“But all in all, the environment was awesome, especially for the heat. We played a relatively clean football game, so for me, I’ll take that as a first game.”

Next up for Sarkisian and Texas is a road trip to Arkansas on Saturday. The Longhorns then have two consecutive home games against Rice and Texas Tech.