Everything Steve Sarkisian said after the Longhorns' loss to Oklahoma State

STILLWATER, Okla. — The Texas Longhorns surrendered another second half lead under Steve Sarkisian, this time to the Oklahoma State Cowboys. OSU outscored Texas 17-3 in the second half to complete the comeback. Quinn Ewers had three interceptions in his first career road start.

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After Texas’ 41-34 loss, Sarkisian addressed the media and took questions on several topics.

Steve Sarkisian postgame comments

Steve Sarkisian: “A couple of things from today’s game that I think were obviously glaring stats, 14 penalties to none. We can’t get 14 penalties for 120 yards just in pure yardage, not to mention the yardage that you lose and positive plays that those plays get pulled back. They had zero. We’ve got to clean that up. We’ve got to clean up the self-inflicted wounds in that aspect of the ball game. The second, 3-of-17 on third down to 8-of-19 on third down, they were able to stay on the field, extend some drives. Our inability to do so hurt us. We really struggled to find rhythm offensively to where I just felt like today was a big-little day, and that’s unfortunate because I think there were some things there when we look at the tape that will be frustrating when we see it. Then defensively, we didn’t tackle. Their big plays they got came from us having them in our grasp and not getting them on the ground. Those are the four major issues coming out of the ballgame today that we’ve got to get rectified. Obviously, we’re heading into the bye week. We need to get healthy. We were a little banged up coming in, got more banged up today. We got to get healthy with the veteran guys that have been playing, but we’ve got to push these younger players to put themselves in position to get on the field where we feel comfortable putting them on the field that they can operate when they’re number is called.”

Steve Sarkisian on if he considered pulling Quinn Ewers: “No.”

Steve Sarkisian on if there was anything wrong with Ewers’ hand, which had a glove on in pregame warmups: “No. His hand is fine and I didn’t consider pulling him.”

Steve Sarkisian on what he would attribute the penalties to: “I don’t think we were jittery at all. For whatever reason, we jumped offsides again. We had some procedural issues offensively. We had holdings offensively. We had pass interference defensively, so there’s things that are very correctable that we can get fixed and will get fixed.”

Steve Sarkisian on if he wanted Ewers to spike the ball on the final drive: “No, I called that play. It was not on Quinn.”

Steve Sarkisian on what he was trying to communicate to Ewers today: “Settle down and trust his progression, trust his read, trust the call. We weren’t great up front today, either. I thought it got a little leaky. To their credit, I thought they played pretty good. When we hit the plays we wanted to hit, we got explosive plays. I just felt like at times he was a little jittery in the pocket, but again, we didn’t help him. We tried to help him with some easier-type throws. Unfortunately, it wasn’t effective enough. That’s on me. We’ve got to have a better plan in place to execute at a higher level.”

Steve Sarkisian on what his message is to Ewers after today: “He’s going to have a great career. He’s got a great career ahead of him. There’s going to be a heck of a lot better days than today that he’ll have. He’s in the young stages of his career. We’ll get back to work. We’ll work on the fundamentals, the techniques, the schemes to operate those things, make sure that he’s going to the next ballgame with a great deal of confidence that he can execute this offense and do it at a high level.”

Steve Sarkisian on DJ Campbell getting snaps: “We’re just trying to build depth. DJ is a good young player. He’s worked at it. He earned that opportunity today to get in there. that’s going to be beneficial for him and his future, and it’s going to be beneficial for us. There’s going to come a time, knock on wood, that somebody’s going to get a little banged up. We’ve got to have a sixth and a seventh guy ready to go. Getting DJ out there I think was good for him.”

Steve Sarkisian on surrendering another second half lead and reverting to old mistakes: “It’s very frustrating because, somewhere in there, we lose whether you want to call it focus, mental intensity. We just didn’t operate very good and a lot of it was self-inflicted wounds. Take nothing away from Oklahoma State, they deserved to win, but a lot of what happened today was self-inflicted wounds. They didn’t beat themselves and they hung around, and we started to beat ourselves. Correctable issues, but that’s our job as coaches to get them corrected. That’s going to be our focus going forward.”

Steve Sarkisian verifying if Quinn Ewers is the starter going forward: “Yes sir.”

Steve Sarkisian on the late incompletion intended for Xavier Worthy: “It’s hard to tell. It was the right read. It’s hard to tell. It was the far sideline so I couldn’t quite see it great. It was the right read. Seemed like the right placement of the throw. I can’t tell from my vantage point of if it was misjudged or not.”

Steve Sarkisian on if OSU made adjustments making the run: “They did, they adjusted to some things. The thing with the run game for us today was we had 100 yards on two carries, then we had 30 more carries for about 100 yards. I would have liked to have been a little bit more efficient in the run game. I wanted to stay aggressive. They were playing a lot of man coverage. Throwing the ball, we couldn’t find the rhythm in the passing game that we would have liked, but they kind of force your hand that way. Some of the runs we had, we didn’t block as well in the second half. As a staff, we have to look to make sure we have the ability to call our best plays available, which I thought we did. But when we look at the tape we’ll see if that’s true or not.”

Steve Sarkisian on OSU’s success over the middle: “Hard to tell. I don’t know if we were walling receivers well enough inside-out. That was the plan going in, but they were able to find their windows in there. But we had some opportunities. The ball was loose. We had our hands on balls in the air. We didn’t come down with them. That’s just the physical nature of just sometimes, you don’t make those plays. We had opportunities to get some interceptions. The ball got popped out, they recovered it. Knowing that they were going to work the middle of the field by their slot receivers, then getting in there, we’ve got to assess how and why that happened when we look at the tape. Because that was the plan, we knew that was something they liked to do.”

Steve Sarkisian on Anthony Cook: “Definitely hurt losing Cook. Any time you lose a senior in the back end who has played a lot of football, that has an effect on us. He was playing hard. He was playing well. He ended up breaking his arm. We’ll assess it more tomorrow of what it looks like in his future that way.