Steve Sarkisian highlights impact of Roschon Johnson, Bijan Robinson and how to replace them

Texas’ offense has a lot to overcome heading into next season. The Longhorns still have several key components to work with but, thanks to the NFL Draft, they lost almost 90% of last year’s rushing yards due to the departures of Bijan Robinson and Roschon Johnson.

Now, Steve Sarkisian is having to think outside the box while also appreciating those two for their contributions to the program. In an interview on ‘The Pivot Podcast’, he addressed Texas’ focus when it came to the run game next season. First, though, he looked back and thanked both Robinson and Johnson for sticking with it on The 40 Acres when things we’re always easy.

“We lost two great players, actually. We lost Bijan Robinson and Roschon Johnson,” Sarkisian said. “I owe a great deal to both of them because, when we came here, the program was not stable. Our first year? It was tough, it was hard. We lost some really tough games. (But) those guys were rocks every day. They showed up, they practiced harder than anybody, they worked harder than anybody in the offseason.”

We all know what kind of talent we’re talking about with Robinson. In three years of college football, he racked up over 4,200 yards of offense alone while scoring 41 touchdowns. Still, losing Johnson is just as much of a hit considering he gave Texas over 650 scrimmage yards per season over his four years to go along with 26 touchdowns.

That’s a lot of yards and scoring punch to lose in one area in one offseason. Even so, Sarkisian isn’t shying away from the challenge of creating a solution. Still, he does understand that, with any answer that they come up with, running the football is going to have to be a component of it.

“Every year you have your own challenges. You look at your team, you look at your roster. Where are your issues? How are we going to fix these issues and how are we going to play to the strengths of what we have?,” Sarkisian asked. “Now they’re gone. So, now, you’ve got to tap into who do we have now? We’ve got some really good players on board now. Who’s coming into the program to help us now?”

“(We) talked about Cedric Baxter out of Orlando. But what else on our team? Where are we going to lean in to? Are we going to lean into an Xavier Worthy, a Jordan Whittington? Are we going to bring in an AD Mitchell from Georgia? Maybe we’ve got to throw the ball a little bit more,” continued Sarkisian. “But what I do know is, every year I’ve called plays in college football, I’ve always had an 1,000 yard rusher. Somebody’s gonna tote it for us and we’re gonna figure it out…We believe in running the football, we believe you win games up front and you run the ball.”

There’s nothing easy about replacing that much production from one room on your offense. With that said, it seems Sarkisian has more than one contingency ready to go in order to keep Texas’ offense rolling, whether that’s still on the ground or now more so through the air.