Players remaining from 2021 team are the backbone of Longhorns’ current success
It’s been a long and bumpy road that’s brought the Texas football team back to the cusp of playing for a Big 12 Conference title and, perhaps, a shot at the College Football Playoff. If you’re reading this, you likely understand the “ride or die” frustration of the 14 seasons since the Longhorns have been in high cotton.
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For Longhorns’ coach Steve Sarkisian, the team’s progress from its embarrassing 5-7 performance in 2021 to a No. 7 spot in the most recent CFP Rankings are manifested in the players who stuck with the program when they could have abandoned ship.
Sarkisian said the 28 scholarship players on the Longhorns that endured 2021 are the true believers and as they’ve grown so too has Texas as a football team.
“I’m probably most proud of the players that have been with us for three years,” Sarkisian said Thursday. “I’ve referenced these guys a lot and they had to endure that first season. They had to endure 5-7, some excruciating losses in year one, and they had to hear the noise from a negative perspective.
“They came back to work and they showed a lot of leadership going into year two, and they saw some growth as we went through year two. We look back and there were some tough losses in that season as well that could have changed the complexion for our season and we possibly could have been in the Big 12 championship game. But they didn’t settle.”
The 28 players still on the team from 2021 are:
- Ja’Tavion Sanders
- Jordan Whittington
- Keilan Robinson
- Xavier Worthy
- Charles Wright
- Michael Taaffe
- Kitan Crawford
- Jahdae Barron
- Jonathon Brooks
- Jerrin Thompson
- David Gbenda
- Morice Blackwell
- Jaylan Ford
- Jett Bush
- Bert Auburn
- Vernon Broughton
- Jake Majors
- Christian Jones
- Hayden Conner
- Max Merril
- Juan Davis
- Gunnar Helm
- Casey Cain
- Barryn Sorrell
- Byron Murphy
- Sawyer Goram-Welch
- T’Vondre Sweat
- Alfred Collins
The Longhorns (8-1, 5-1 in Big 12) travel to Fort Worth on Saturday with TCU standing it their way in their hunt for the Big 12 title. Texas’ eight wins after nine games is its best start since it went undefeated on the way to the BCS Championship game against Alabama after the 2009 season.
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“We got better,” Sarkisian explained. “The players came back again this year and were so bought into what we did that they love our culture here. And we’ve tried to instill a great culture when we got here in. It takes time when you really want to change a culture and then build a culture.
“But those guys didn’t just buy into this culture, they took our culture and have made it better. And I give those guys a lot of credit. I’m very, very proud of those guys. Because in this day and age of the transfer portal, when you can go anywhere in the country at any given time, those guys didn’t; they believed in what we were doing, even through some difficult times in that first season.”
Sarkisian said the players have done more than just adapt to the culture of this team – they’ve been important parts of the process of improving it.
“They made us better,” Sarkisian said. “In the meantime we were recruiting some players. And yes, we had staff continuity. But we would not be in the situation we are today without that group of young men that have been with us for three years and that have that have stuck through this and that have been committed to this program. They have been leaders in our program.”
