Steve Sarkisian stresses need for strong defense to contend for a national championship

Texas head coach Steve Sarkisian has been around championship teams. The 49-year-old head coach was an assistant when USC won the title two decades ago and just a few years back when Alabama won its most recent title during the 2020 season.

While Sarkisian was an offensive assistant both of those seasons — and his entire assistant coaching resume features the position of either quarterback coach, offensive coordinator or offensive analyst — he also got to see some great defenses go to work.

Sarkisian addressed the importance of defense in the run for a national title when he hopped on The Herd with Fox Sports’ Colin Cowherd on Monday.

“I think you have to have defense,” Sarkisian said. “At the end of the day, you have to, you need it. You start going through it. Even the year LSU wins it with Joe Burrow, they weren’t great on defense, especially earlier in the year, but as the season went on, they started playing better and better defense as that year went on. You still have to play great defense. And I think also you have to be an opportunistic defense. You got to find ways to create turnovers, you got to find ways to get stops in the red area and force field goals, then you got to find a way to get stops on fourth down because not anymore in college football do you defend three downs, you got to defend four.”

The importance of fourth-down defense was something Sarkisian hammered home to Cowherd during the interview.

Texas was not great at stopping opponents on fourth down in 2022. Opponents were able to convert for a first down 57.14% of the time. National champion Georgia was significantly better at 38.71%. Two other teams that made the College Football Playoff — Michigan and Ohio State — finished in the top 13 of the rankings.

“You never know when teams are gonna go for it anymore,” Sarkisian said. “I mean, Lane (Kiffin) I think has partially changed the game here at Ole Miss. ‘The book,’ as he refers to it as, always seems to say go for it. So, I’m not sure what book he’s got. But at the end of it all, you know, I think you still have to play defense. You got to get stops, you got to create turnovers, and you got to be able to affect the quarterback. Because everybody’s throwing the ball around. You got to find a way to affect the quarterback, to create some errant throws and turnovers and whatnot.”