Steve Sarkisian not concerned about first College Football Playoff ranking

If the season ended today, Texas would be the third team out of the 2023-24 College Football Playoff as it stands entering Week 10.

Longhorns head coach Steve Sarkisian isn’t psyching himself out about the inital CFP rankings, however. Instead, all of his focus has been directed toward Saturday’s matchup against No. 23 Kansas State.

“It’s so early in this thing that I’m not really concerned about it. There’s so much football left to be played,” Sarkisian said on Thursday. “I think one of the keys to this drill having been part of this now a few different times is focusing on what you can control. What we can control is our preparation and ultimately, the way we play on Saturdays. We can’t get caught up in what other people are doing.

“I think that’s the biggest mistake you can make, getting caught up and looking around what everybody else is doing. … We need to mow our own lawn. We need to make sure that our lawn looks good before we start looking across the street at what our neighbor’s lawn looks like. We’ve got to continue to focus on what we need to do, staying focused on the task at hand one week at a time.”

Despite Sarkisian’s request, it’s not easy to mow anyone’s lawn with a grade 2 AC joint sprain in your right shoulder. That is the case for Longhorns star quarterback Quinn Ewers, who went down with injury during the Week 8 victory over Houston before missing last week’s matchup against BYU.

Reinforcements in the form of redshirt freshman quarterback Maalik Murphy have aided Texas along the way, and is expected to make the second start of his career against the Wildcats this weekend. There’s no guarantee that Ewers will make it back in time for Week 11’s road matchup against TCU, but his participation is mandatory if Texas wants to win the Big 12 and move on to better things from there.

Still, Murphy has been steady in his new role — albeit after a rough start to the first game of his career. After throwing a first half interception, the former four-star recruit went on to throw for the first two touchdowns of his career while leading Longhorns to a 35-6 victory. Texas will look to replicate that score for the second Saturday in a row.

Heading into the weekend, Texas is a 14.5-point favorite against the Wildcats, per Vegas Insider. The over/under total is set at 49.5 points.