Steve Sarkisian addresses new headset communication rules, Texas' lofty preseason rankings at THSCA convention

On Sunday, Steve Sarkisian spoke to the media at the Texas High School Coaches Association’s Coaching School in San Antonio. It’s been largely talked about how Sark employs a national recruiting approach, however, his outreach to Texas high school coaches has been pretty calculated since his arrival. Not only does he address them at the annual convention, which he’ll do today at 10 a.m., but he hosts them on campus during the spring and makes his coaches frequently available for online Zoom seminars. If you’re a Texas high school coach you have access to the Texas program.

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The fourth-year coach spoke for almost 20 minutes. The first two things he discussed when speaking with the media was the new headset communication rules in which one offensive and defensive player can have direct communication with the coaches and Texas’ lofty SEC preseason ranking in which the Horns were behind only Georgia. 

Sark sees positives and negatives with coach/player headset communication

Sark opened up his discussion by saying the new headset communication rules with the quarterback has many believing teams will run even more tempo. Sark mentions he’s reserving judgment on that notion as the other 10 players on offense still need to get the call relayed to them. The running backs, tight ends, and receivers still need time to get the call from the quarterback. Sark mentions at Texas they are very multiple with their formations and use a lot of motions and shifts so the headsets don’t necessarily help them with tempo. He’ll still go regular, slow, and fast depending on the situation. 

Sarkisian did state he Iikes the rule change given his experience in the NFL. He says it’s definitely easier to communicate with the QB “and sometimes just voice inflection helps the quarterback understand the importance of something in a play. It does allow you to give some subtle tips and reminders that may not always be for the quarterback.”

He said he can relay tips to the right guard, running back, etc. 

He then turned his attention to the other side of the ball and stated there’s a real challenge defensively. The player wearing the headset (for Texas it will be Anthony Hill) still has to get that call to all his teammates and if an offense runs tempo that’s going to be difficult to do. The headsets are not the end all be all, coaches still need to be able to communicate with their players the old way in the event offenses go fast and the defense isn’t getting aligned in time. 

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College and NFL are different

Sark goes on to mention the stark differences between college and the NFL.

“In the NFL everybody huddles until two-minute and guys start going no-huddle,” Sarkisian said. “In college football there’s a lot more no-huddle aspects to what teams do, and so the play-caller, especially defensively, is going to have to really be on point on if the team is trying to go fast or not. I think it’s important that the play-caller doesn’t panic, that we show a lot of composure as a coaching staff to get our players the call in a timely fashion but let’s not be too quick to jump to a conclusion that they’re necessarily going fast. There’s layers to this thing that we worked through in spring ball and we’re going to have to continue to work through in training camp and really the first few weeks of the season.”

Sark says the adjustment period to the new rule is going to be a work in progress.

One can’t help but wonder what sorts of advantages smart staffs will utilize in the early going before everyone catches on. 

Texas’ lofty standing in preseason polls

Sark has mentioned numerous times throughout the years how preseason polls are good for the sport and make things interesting, but “at the end of the day, it’s not about what people think, it’s not about what we say we’re going to do, it’s about our actions. It’s about the way we actually perform.”

Before that statement he said, “Do I think we have a pretty good team? Sure I do. I didn’t shy away from that at media days.”

If you saw or read about the ending of his media day PC, Sark exuded more confidence, and perhaps a little more swagger, than we’ve seen from him in his time at Texas. That sounded like the guy who could pull off the Burger King pregame leisure suit. 

The long and short of it is, he knows this is a good team on paper but nothing matters outside of the result on Saturday.

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During this portion, Sark made mention of the media’s role in making the sport “as popular as it’s ever been.” A lot of coaches view the media as adversarial, and sometimes it is either through sensationalistic reporting or “rat poison,” but the media does play an integral role in driving fan interest. To me, this reiterated how big of a fan of the sport Sark is, which is something he’s reiterated since the day he was hired.