Friday Night Focus: Steve Sarkisian's return to the head coaching ranks

Considerable risk accompanies nearly every major head coaching hire. Texas’ January selection of Steve Sarkisian to lead the Longhorn football program was no different.

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More than five years after his termination at USC for off-field issues, UT board of regents chairman Kevin Eltife, president Jay Hartzell, and athletic director Chris Del Conte tabbed Sarkisian to be Tom Herman’s successor. Hoping to re-create the offenses Sarkisian put together as Alabama’s offensive play-caller, the UT triumvirate brought the BYU grad to Austin after unsuccessful attempts to lure Urban Meyer away from Fox Sports studios.

For Sarkisian, it is his first head coaching role (save for the 2020 Iron Bowl due to Nick Saban’s absence) since his termination at USC in 2015. Plenty can change, and plenty has changed, in college football in the five seasons since he last walked the sidelines as a head coach, and in the years since his first job as a program’s lead man at Washington in 2009.

Did anything catch him by surprise upon his return to the head coaching ranks?

“I don’t necessarily know if I’ve been surprised by anything,” Sarkisian said Thursday.

After completing the first portion of his recovery process, Sarkisian quickly jumped back into coaching. He worked two stints with Alabama and one with the Atlanta Falcons, continuing to stay present in the modern game.

“I think through experience I’ve been fortunate having been a head coach at two different universities prior to this one, having had experience and worked closely with the head coach in Atlanta in Dan Quinn, and having worked closely with Coach Saban at Alabama, I think I’ve been exposed to a lot,” Sarkisian said.

Though the Texas job isn’t where Sarkisian marks his return to the sidelines, it is an ambitious role to take on in a return to a head coaching.

With the UT position comes plenty of responsibilities, and Sarkisian mentioned his affinity for taking care of those responsibilities. He professed love for recruiting, scheming, and player development. The same went for his relationship with the UT administration, donors, fans, and students.

“It’s great just to be back in the saddle doing it,” Sarkisian said. “I love what I get to do. Obviously, I would love to have a few different results here along the way, but at the end of the day that doesn’t change my gratitude for what I get to do on a daily basis.”

As the head coach and public face of the program, Sarkisian has more on his plate than when he was a coordinator. At Alabama, he was shielded from interacting with the media by a Saban policy that rarely made coordinators and assistant coaches available for questions (a policy Sarkisian has continued at Texas).

His stated reasoning, mainly, is because he believes the responsibility for successes or failures on both sides of the ball fall upon him.

“When you’re a coordinator, you work a little bit more with one side of the ball,” Sarkisian said. “When you become a head coach, you take it all on.”

In taking it all on, some growing pains related to “getting back in the saddle” have become apparent. The Longhorns’ current 4-6 record the best evidence of those pains. Texas has lost second-half leads, and player effort is a question hanging around the program.

His 2021 season at Texas has mostly been marked by consistently poor defensive performances. The Longhorns under first-year defensive coordinator Pete Kwiatkowski rank No. 105 in total defense and have allowed conference opponents to score 38 points per game.

Much of Sarkisian’s focus thus far has been on his sometimes good, sometimes bad, sometimes quarterbacked by Casey Thompson, sometimes quarterbacked by Hudson Card offense. But as the head coach, the performance of the defense ultimately falls on him.

On Monday, he mentioned he would closely assess if he would get further involved in defensive preparation during the offseason considering the entire program is under his purview.

“I do think I have some real experience and expertise in coaching football where I can add some value to what we’re installing, how we’re coaching it, and how to play some of the plays that, now (that) I’m getting used to our conference, of how people are attacking us and maybe a different way to defend things,” Sarkisian said.

Sarkisian was asked Thursday what he has learned about himself this season. He reflected on his personal struggles and how they’ve made him into the person he is today, a person who tries to be the best version of himself from the moment he wakes up.

But he also said he relies on his coaching experience not just in his week-to-week efforts, but also in his efforts going forward leading the program. Those efforts likely include a hard look at everything about the program, defense included.

Whenever he does that, he’ll trust what he’s learned from past experiences to try to improve Texas from wherever it ends up at the conclusion of the 2021 season.

“I’ve been doing this a long time,” Sarkisian said Thursday. “I believe in the process in which I go about what we do as a team and then ultimately what I do individually to get myself prepared, to get our team prepared, to make sure that everything that I do has the best interests of the University of Texas and our players at heart.”