Steve Sarkisian on Texas' first loss: 'Every week is a championship game now'

Texas‘ loss to Georgia in Week 8 made it clear to Longhorns head coach Steve Sarkisian that his team may need to run the table to make it to the SEC Championship game in December.

This is nothing new for Texas, however, as last season a loss to Oklahoma in October forced the Longhorns to win out to make it to the Big 12 Championship game. That ended up being the case and Texas found themselves in the national semifinal. Why can’t it happen twice?

“It’s a relatively similar situation in that every week is a championship game now,” Sarkisian told reporters on Monday during his weekly press conference. “Similar to last year in the Big 12 with no divisions, now we come into the SEC and there’s no divisions again,” Sarkisian said. “A lot of the teams that are at or near the top of our conference standings right now, we don’t play. Some of them we do, a lot of them we don’t.

“We have to really make sure that we take care of our business one week at a time. We can’t just point to one or two games and say ‘if we win that one, we’re going to be okay.’ It really feels like from here on out, we’re kind of in an SEC Championship game. That’s the same mentality that we had last year in the Big 12, that every game matters to that degree, and we have to put ourselves in Atlanta, right?”

The first stop for Texas on that journey will be in Nashville for a date with No. 25 Vanderbilt. The Commodores have enjoyed a magical start to the 2024 season, and is a tricky place for the Longhorns to play in coming off their first loss of the season.

The Longhorns will also play Florida, Arkansas, Kentucky and Texas A&M before the end of the regular season. They’ll likely be favored in every matchup, and are 18.5-point favorites against the Commodores on the road this weekend.

Kickoff is schedueld for 4:15 p.m. ET and will air live on the SEC Network.