Steve Sarkisian shares area of improvement needed on Texas defense

The Longhorns are entertaining the idea of being a College Football Playoff contender in 2023, but to get there they’ll need the Texas defense to take a significant step forward this fall.

The team finished 27th in scoring defense a year ago but was just 53rd in total defense and 90th in passing defense.

Head coach Steve Sarkisian, though, is targeting one specific area for improvement. It’s one he has worked with the team on throughout fall camp, especially in the team’s most recent scrimmage.

“An area where I know we can improve defensively this year, we’re really making it a point to get after the quarterback and we’re seeing the effect of that,” Sarkisian said. “But we still have to understand our rush lanes, especially on third down. That is definitely an area for us to clean up and try to minimize some of the quarterback scrambles that came into having big plays on Saturday.”

Texas’ defense ranked just 71st last year in sacks, producing 27 on the season, or about 2.1 per game. While that’s not a horrible figure, it can certainly be improved.

And there tends to be a high correlation between a strong pass rush and takeaways, an area where Texas was very poor a year ago.

In 2022, the Longhorns ranked just 104th nationally in takeaways, producing 14 in 13 games. That will have to improve. But with opposing quarterbacks more rattled by an improved pass rush from the Texas defense, that could certainly happen.

Sarkisian also targeting pre-snap penalties

Another area Sarkisian is focused on with his team is eliminating pre-snap penalties. Those can be absolute drive-killers (or extenders on defense).

“Naturally, there’s always things you want to clean up coming out of a scrimmage,” Sarkisian said. “For us, pre-snap penalties, we need to improve.”

That was an issue in the team’s recent scrimmage, though Sarkisian didn’t really note if the Texas offense or Texas defense was more at fault.

“We were not clean pre-snap,” he said. “As you guys know, we like to motion and shift and do different things before that ball’s snapped, and too many false starts, illegal procedure stuff that we can clean up.”

Texas opens its season on Sept. 2 at home against Rice.