Steve Sarkisian wants this Texas Longhorns bye week to be the season's halfway point

If there’s one thing you can say about Texas football head coach Steve Sarkisian, it’s that he’s consistent with his rhetoric and goals.

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Ever since the head coach took over in Austin, Sarkisian has made it clear he’s been building up a team to be ready for the challenge of the SEC. Even before it was announced in the summer of 2021 that the Longhorns were become members of the conference, Sarkisian knew that to build a team able to win a national championship he had to have one that could beat the SEC.

So even after two weeks of play on the gridiron that was far from consistent, Sarkisian hasn’t missed a beat when discussing where his program is at, and what the aspirations are for the season.

“As we’re transitioning into this bye, I was thinking to myself, ‘Okay, we’re 7-1, we’re eight games into the season, and the goal is to be playing January 20,’” Sarkisian said Monday. “And if you want to play on January 20, you’re at a minimum playing eight more games. So when you look at this way, we’re at the halfway point and might have to play nine, depending on how it goes.”

Though the Longhorns have already played 67% of their regular season games in 2024, Sarkisian isn’t taking this bye week as one to rally his players into a strong finish. This is just a stopping point for the head coach on the way to what might be almost three more months of football.

The math does work out in Sarkisian’s favor. Say Texas were to hit the ground running out of the bye, defeating Florida, Arkansas in Fayetteville, Kentucky and Texas A&M in College Station. The Longhorns would likely be playing in the SEC Championship game. That’s five games even before the College Football Playoff starts.

If the Longhorns didn’t win the SEC Championship and weren’t granted a bye in the first round, they would have to win their first-round matchup, then a quarterfinal game, then the CFP semifinal and finally the national championship on January 20. If Texas were to run the table, that’s nine more games left on this schedule.

And the plan has always been the same for Sarkisian: to turn this team into a national champion. This narrative and rhetoric isn’t random coach-speak from an over-confident, in-over-his-head glorified offensive coordinator. It’s an embodiment of the culture of success Sarkisian has going in Austin.

Though the Longhorns did make the College Football Playoff last season, it’s easy to see why this year is seen as Texas’ best chance to hoist the golden trophy in Sarkisian’s short tenure. Texas entered the season as the No. 4 ranked team. The Longhorns were returning fourth-year quarterback Quinn Ewers and had just brought in three straight top-six recruiting classes plus six top-100 transfers to solidify positions of need.

There are no guarantees any of the scenarios above can happen. The Longhorns have been one of the shakiest looking teams in high-level college football the last two weeks and lost a lot of potential championship buzz after they were outscored 42-54 in their two biggest tests of the SEC season so far. But Sarkisian practices what he preaches and plans to return to the No. 1 ranking in college football before the season ends. Those plans include work weeks all the way through mid-January.

Sarkisian is going to be able to regroup a team facing multiple injuries, with hopes of Isaiah Bond and Andrew Mukuba returning to the lineup against Florida. Plus, he’ll have to determine who is worthy of playing in the most crucial moments of upcoming games. With over 40 players seeing 100 or more snaps worth of action this season, Sarkisian has established one of the deeper teams in the nation.

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Now it’s up to the fourth-year coach to find the best spots to use them in and regroup his team for what could be a season with nine more contests.