Steve Sarkisian: "I kind of relish being the villain"

Before he was the head coach at Washington, current Longhorns head coach Steve Sarkisian traveled to Husky Stadium as a BYU player and was introduced to what he described Thursday as his “OMG” moment in college football.

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It was the only loss his Cougars suffered during that 1996 season, but it was one that planted a seed that continues to grow in the fourth-year Texas head coach to this day.

Sarkisian was 23-for-35 for 279 yards and two touchdowns but was sacked eight times, including one for a safety that put the game at its final 29-17 margin. Even within that loss, Sark felt something while looking up at Husky Stadium’s overhangs that drives him when he’s entering a hostile environment.

“In that moment, there’s another level in your mind you go to,” Sarkisian said Thursday. “There’s another level of what opposing stadiums can feel like and be like, especially when there’s some hatred towards the opponent when you walk in. For whatever reason, people can generate hate in a lot of different ways.

“For me, now I’ve learned to relish those opportunities. I kind of relish being the villain. I kind of like going in there and thinking ‘man, there’s 100 versus 120,000 and we’re the villain.’ And it’s okay being the villain. How do we create that deafening silence? How do we go about that?

“That comes about by our style of play. That comes about by our execution. That comes about by sticking together and playing as one. I love those opportunities. As much as I like playing at home, I like (playing on the road) too. I think you find out a lot about yourself and about your team.”

Other notes from Sark’s Thursday Zoom

***Sarkisian: “This week of preparation is always challenging when it’s your first time coming off a game, having to review a game, and then get into the next game and finding that routine. As always, I’ve been praising the veterans on our team and the leaders on our team for showing the way to our younger players and how to do that. I think one good sign for us is we have progressively gotten better throughout the week of being intentional in practice in what we’re trying to accomplish, understanding the why’s of doing what we’re doing, and inevitably it’s capped off with a really good week of work. I feel good about the state of mind that our guys are in. I think they’re excited yet focused, and obviously we’re looking forward to the opportunity.”

***Looking at WR depth, Sarkisian spoke about how he thinks they remain a “little bit of a work in progress” thanks to a one-game sample size, but mentioned that all six top-line receivers and Ryan Niblett in his multifaceted role did what they needed to do: “All they did was give me even more confidence.”

***With new coaches at Michigan, Sarkisian was asked about preparing for the unknowns on Saturday. He acknowledged how the Wolverines probably spent some of their offseason prep on the Longhorns: “It’s going to be critical for us to identify what they’re trying to do.”

***Sark pointed to the availability of iPads on the sidelines as a thing that could help them make adjustments quicker than when they head to the locker room or are just communicating on the headsets.

Sark on team speed: "Speed on the perimeter is important to us."

*Says it's a byproduct of how Texas works to "recruit to speed."
*Mentions Texas S&C training is meant to accentuate speed
*Credits nutrition in cultivating footspeed

— Inside Texas (@InsideTexas) September 5, 2024

***Sarkisian was asked about the fact that Quinn Ewers is a third-year QB in his system entering a tough environment: “Having that calming effect at quarterback, I think is helpful for the other guys on the field. For me, just knowing that he’s going to operate the calls accordingly is comforting. When I’m calling something, he’s understanding the intent of the play-call. That doesn’t mean it’s always going to go that way, but as long as Quinn understands the intent of the play-call, generally pretty good things come out of it.”

Steve Sarkisian: "These guys haven't won 23 in a row on accident. It's tough."

— Inside Texas (@InsideTexas) September 5, 2024

***Sark was pleased with what Jerrick Gibson did against CSU. He doesn’t know when Gibson will play, but: “I know he’ll play this Saturday.”

***Sarkisian on Ryan Wingo: “I think the thing about Ryan, even throughout the recruiting process and then early on when he got here, is there was a real sense of maturity about him. He’s a worker. He loves football. He’s humble. He knows he is not a finished product, yet he continues to work every day. As he gets incremental growth and incremental success, he just continues to stack that on top of the growth that he’s already put in.”

Steve Sarkisian: "I don't think it's a secret. We like the screen game. The more things we do really well, the harder we feel like we are to defend."

"We're trying to do as many things as we can really, really well, and we value the screen game."

— Inside Texas (@InsideTexas) September 5, 2024