Everything Steve Sarkisian said after Texas' 17-10 loss to TCU

Here’s everything Texas head coach Steve Sarkisian said following the Texas Longhorns’ 17-10 loss to the TCU Horned Frogs.

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Steve Sarkisian: “First of all, we didn’t play good enough to win the game. That’s pretty easy to see. Before I get into the issues, I’d like to highlight a couple of things we did do well. I think defensively, it definitely gave us a chance to win the football game. Tackles for losses, sacks, poor field position, getting stops. I thought Jahdae Barron had a heck of a game. Continued to battle and make plays. TFLs, big fumble recovery. Barryn Sorrell, heck of a game. DeMarvion (Overshown), Ryan Watts. A lot of guys played really good on the defensive side of the ball, plenty good enough for us to win.”

“Offensively, zero rhythm in the game. We could not get out of our own way, which is extremely frustrating. Clearly did not see this coming. I thought we practiced really well. I thought we were prepared. I thought we understood the plan. But for one reason or not, we kind of took turns just not executing. The reality of it is that’s on me because I have to make sure I’m putting the players in a position to where they feel confident enough to go make plays. Clearly tonight, we didn’t do it. We got behind the chains. We had a bunch of third and longs. One for 13 on third down is unacceptable. Then, we had a couple opportunities in the second half to seize momentum. First and goals two times and came away with a total of three points, arguably the difference in the game late in the ballgame. Sometimes you’re going to have ugly games but you find a way. It was ugly, and we had a chance, but we didn’t find a way. In the end, we didn’t play good enough to win. We lost to a good team, but this was more about us. Credit to them hanging in there and not turning the ball over, but we didn’t play good enough to win the football game, especially offensively.”

Steve Sarkisian on his red zone play-calling: “The first one, we went to a little tempo. Roschon (Johnson) was the back on the field. He got the one carry down there. We weren’t very effective running the ball all night. We were actually trying to get Bijan (Robinson) on a wheel route the second time we were down there. Just didn’t see him. You try to do what you were doing that might be working that got you down there, and clearly we were throwing the ball to get down there. The run game just wasn’t clicking the way we would have liked to tonight.”

Steve Sarkisian on if he considered pulling Quinn Ewers: ”To me, it wasn’t all on Quinn. I think that everybody took turns tonight. We were just off and then that probably wouldn’t have been fair to Hudson (Card) to put him in at the end of the game to try to save the day with a couple of minutes to go. I thought Quinn continued to compete. A couple of unfortunate errors to where the ball gets knocked out of his hand, different things happen, he slips, so it’s just one of those nights where we couldn’t get into any sort of rhythm. Again, I’m sure Quinn will tell you he would have loved to play better, but I think everybody on offense could say the same thing, we all could have played better.”

Steve Sarkisian on supporting Quinn Ewers: ”That’s part of it. To me, it wasn’t about him tonight. We’ve got to catch the ball. We’ve got to be where we’re supposed to be. We’ve got to block. We’ve got to run the football. We’ve got to do a lot of things around the quarterback. That’s got to improve and then his game has to improve, but in the end that falls back on me and our offensive staff to make sure that we’re putting all of our players, quarterback included, in the best position to have success. For whatever reason tonight, we’ve got to go back and look at everything again to see what can we do differently moving forward to ensure we operate better and we just didn’t operate good tonight. Like I said, I’d love to say it was just one thing, but it really wasn’t. We didn’t run the ball well. We didn’t throw the ball well. We didn’t execute in the red zone well. We didn’t convert third downs well. We didn’t do anything good. It’s easy to point at one guy, but that wasn’t the case. We didn’t play good offensive football.”

Steve Sarkisian on punting on 4th and 1 in the first half, and the punt block call in the second half: ”The 4th and 1, with the flow of the game, it was 3-0. We got for it right there. If we don’t get it, I just didn’t want to give them the ball with a short field with a chance to get points when we were playing good defense. When you’re playing good defense and you’re struggling a little bit offensively, you can — I hate to say play it conservative but essentially you do. Let’s get in halftime and let’s regroup, and let’s try to come out and play the second half. We were getting the ball to start the second half. I just didn’t want to give them a short field to get points and give them more momentum heading into the locker room. The 4th and 3, it was an aggressive call. We call it aggressive on special teams. If he blocks it, it’s a great play. D-Mo just missed it. It just missed his fingertip right there. It’s unfortunate. Again, you can look back on it and you can always second guess when things don’t work. I thought it was a good call. We had a free rusher on the punt, then he just misses it and then we end up roughing them and sometimes you have to live with it that way.”

Steve Sarkisian on D’Shawn Jamison’s absence: ”He had an injury. He had got a concussion earlier this week in practice, so he was out medically.”

Steve Sarkisian on if he saw the right attitude from Quinn Ewers in the second half: ”Yeah. I think Quinn is a highly competitive young man. I think he was seeing the defense well. It was just one of those weird things where things didn’t go his way. He goes to throw a quick screen to JT Sanders and the ball hits Bijan in the hip or elbow and knocks out of his hands. He’s stepping up to throw a ball and he slips and falls down. It just didn’t happen. I wasn’t about ‘his eyes weren’t good’ or ’he wasn’t comfortable in the pocket.’ Felt like all those things were on point. All the discussions we had, he felt very comfortable. To answer your question, I saw the right things.”

Steve Sarkisian on if he needed to have faith in his offense late in the first half instead of punting: ”I get the point. Again, to me in a 3-0 game the way that that first half was going, I didn’t want to give them any momentum going into the locker room at halftime to get it to 6-0 or 10-0. Not that I don’t have faith in our guys, but it’s different when with that much time left to go in the first half. Different than if let’s say there was four minutes to go where maybe you can get another possession. That was just that scenario that came up. You’ve got to make that call in that moment. I think that was the right thing to do, let’s get in the locker room at 3-0. Let’s regroup and get the ball to start the second half and try to play better.”

Steve Sarkisian on what putting players in a position to be successful looks like: ”I think it’s everything, right? We’ve got to look back at the game plan itself. We’ve got to look back at the implementation of the game plan. We’ve got to look back at what we practiced, what we practiced against, what we called in-game to give the guys confidence. I’m not saying that not every call was a bad call, but clearly we didn’t execute the way we’re capable of executing and somewhere in there, we didn’t have enough clarity and poise and composure, then ultimately confidence, to go execute the calls we were making. As much as maybe I would have liked the call, we still have to go execute those calls in game. That’s what I’ve got to look at. How do I make sure I put our players in position to have the confidence to go make those plays and to play the way they’re capable of playing.”

Steve Sarkisian on Quentin Johnston’s touchdown, and what disrupted the Texas run game: “I think it was a miscommunication. I‘ve got to look exactly at the route combination over there, but clearly there was a corner-safety. Both of them kind of turned him loose. I couldn’t really see the exact route combination across the field. It might have been a little bit of a flood route, but I’ve got to see the splits and if we were supposed to stay on or if the safety was supposed to stay over the top. Definitely a miscommunication. The run game, it was tough. We just couldn’t move the line of scrimmage. There weren’t a lot of running lanes. I’ve got to look at some of the runners’ reads, that maybe there were some creases there that we weren’t able to hit. In the end, that’s why I talked about the game plan. Was the plan good enough for those guys to go execute that? Definitely didn’t generate anything in the run game that felt comfortable for me as the playcaller or I think for the players on the field to execute.”

Steve Sarkisian on a moment captured where he was comforting DeMarvion Overshown: ”I was just proud of him. Tonight was not about want-to. It was not about effort. Our guys tried hard. I can’t fault them for not trying hard. They tried hard, especially defensively. Those guys played their hearts out. They gave us a chance and anytime you see a guy who’s a senior who plays the way that he played and gave it his all, I want to make sure that he knows that I recognize the way you play the game. I know it hurts. It hurts for all of us. Guy’s a warrior. He plays his tail off. He didn’t want to rough the punter. He’s laying out trying to block it and misses it by maybe a millimeter it felt like. I don’t ever want our guys to feel like they’re the reason we lost the game. We win together, we lose together. D-Mo roughing that punter was not the reason we lost the game. He played his heart out tonight.”

Steve Sarkisian on long pass plays struggling and why they kept going to it: ”I think at the end of the day, people run down the field deeper than others. You layer route combinations and then defenders kind of dictate the progression of the quarterback. When they sit down on certain routes and the deep throw is the throw, you gotta throw them if they’re part of the progression. We felt like we had some opportunities one-on-one down the field. We didn’t make those plays. We kind of adjusted there in the second half on some different things to try to get more completion type plays. I think that helped some. In the end, if we don’t hit a ball or two down the field, people are going to sit on us so we’ve got to find a way to make those and make that connection happen.”