Everything Steve Sarkisian said after Texas' 49-0 win over Oklahoma

Texas was riding high after a historic 49-0 win over the Oklahoma Sooners. Longhorns head coach Steve Sarkisian called one of his best games in burnt orange, accumulating 585 total yards and seven touchdowns on offense

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It wasn’t just the offense who had a strong day. The Longhorn defense made life miserable for an obviously depleted Sooner offense without regular starting quarterback Dillon Gabriel. OU only managed 195 total yards, with only 39 yards passing.

A celebratory Sarkisian spoke to the media after the game. Here’s everything he had to say.

Steve Sarkisian postgame press conference

Opening statement: ”First of all, I’m really happy for these guys. I’m happy for our team. I hate to dwell on last year, but we felt like we let on get away last year. I thought these guys, their teammates, put forth a really good week of preparation. I thought our mental focus, our mental intensity — they were not caught up in all of the fanfare and hoopla of the game. They focused on what they needed to do, and in the end we played a really complete football game. I felt like all three phases, guys executed at a high level. The result was the result. It’s what these guys did. I’m proud of them and their focus. I’m proud of their leadership, and getting themselves prepared to play and play at a high level.”

On if the result was better than he could have imagined, and if this is how he believes his program takes off: “You never know the path exactly that you’re going to go on. You’re always looking for positive trajectory. You’re always looking for your program taking the necessary steps. The hard part is the outside world looks at wins and losses for growth in your program. We look at it every day. I see these guys every day. I see the way they work in the weight room, I see the way the work they put in in the offseason conditioning program. I see the attention to detail at practice. I see the competitiveness and the physicality in practice. That’s the hard part for them because they hear a lot of the outside noise sometimes when we don’t get a win, that we’re not making the necessary progress of the trajectory is not right. Within, I think we felt that it was just continuing to reiterate to them that we’re taking the right, necessary steps. We’re on the right path. Good things are going to continue to happen if we just keep doing it the right way. Again, I credit them for trusting us. It takes time to develop trust. Trust takes time plus consistency. I think we’ve gotten to a point where we’ve got a great deal of trust in our program, in what we do, and how we do, and why we do what we do. Inevitably, moments like this and moments like today just only enhance that. For me, it feels great because I know how hard these guys work. I know it’s been a minute since we’ve gotten that Golden Hat. For a lot of our senior players and veteran players to be able to enjoy today the way that they were able to, I’m super excited for them because it’s been years of hard work and some tough games. In the end, they had a really cool moment today.”

On the Wildcat and adjustments to it: ”I think a couple things came out of that one. Okay, here’s the Wildcat and now you’ve got to start fitting it. They had a couple of different Wildcat versions going that I thought the defensive staff did a good job of just settling the defenders down, of getting it right. We kept reminding them that at some point, they’re going to throw a pass out of this deal, right? They’re not just going to keep running it. Sure enough, the pass they threw we get the interception on in the red area, which I thought was a really big play. In the end, it was just playing disciplined football of knowing what to do, how to do, trusting it, then making your plays when it came your way.”

On Quinn Ewers’ start, the run game, and the shutout: ”I thought we found good rhythm after the first drive. I look back now, so much for my openers. That didn’t start so hot for us right off the bat. You know, we didn’t get the conversion on third down in the first drive, but from that moment on I thought we had good rhythm offensively. I thought the run game set up a lot of the things we were doing in the pass game, then we were able to win on first down. We kept saying it all week, we’ve got to win first down because that’s going to give us manageable third downs when we got to them. I thought we did that, and it started with the run game. It was really effective. I thought Bijan and Roschon both played really well running the football today. Quinn was spot on. The ball was going where it was supposed to go on time, and the playmakers made their plays whether it’s Xavier, or Jordan, or JT, those guys all showed up. I think defensively, first shutout in this game since 1965 or something like that. It’s a tribute to these guys, I’m super pumped for them. What a moment, something they can carry with them. These guys, they’ve been playing really good defense all year. They really have. I hate that one half of a game all of a sudden defines who we were a couple of weeks ago. We’ve been playing good defense and will continue to play good defense. Up front is where it starts, then being really disciplined in the back end. We haven’t given up explosive plays, and when you make people earn it and make them drive the football, then ultimately today create a couple turnovers, those are huge moving forward.”

On Ewers, rust, and seeing him play well: ”It’s been a rough month here. As much as Quinn has been out and trying to get himself back, Hudson hasn’t been healthy either. Every week was kind of a juggling act of what this was going to look like going into every game. I could kind of feel it on Monday that both guys were actually feeling better. The hardest part about not playing quarterback is not the physical part, it’s the mental part. It’s the nuances in our system. Our system, we change tempos quite a bit. We huddle. We shift. We motion. We go fast, we do a lot of different things that don’t seem like much outside, but in our world are big deals. Sometimes, those are the hardest things to get mastered when you’re coming back off. I thought as the week went on, Quinn was much more dialed into it and it showed. I know everyone thinks this was the plan all along of something. I didn’t notify Quinn or Hud of what was going to happen this week literally until Thursday afternoon. That’s how long I took it. I credit both of them for their work of dialing into it, being there for one another, and pushing one another, staying connected. In the end, he was ready. That’s why we did what we did.”

On the offense: ”I talked to the team last night. I referenced it. I said nobody else in college football is doing what you guys are doing right now. The amount we’re putting on these guys pre-snap, the way we go about our business, they allow us to do that stuff because of their preparation. They owned it, and they’ve been owning it, and they’ve been doing it at a high level. In the end, it doesn’t feel like we’re doing something so grand. It just feels like normal. That’s just what we do, and I think it’s been helpful. The other thing I think was really helpful today was our ability to run the ball downhill. We weren’t very lateral today, I mean we had some lateral runs but a lot of the stuff we did running the ball was down hill. It was physical. I thought Bijan and Ro both ran real physical, downhill football. That helped the pass game, got them to step up, and find some intermediate throws there in behind them.”