Three things to know from Sark: Pete Kwiatkowski has multiplicity in Year 3, the Bama benchmark, practice mindset

Texas head coach Steve Sarkisian was available to the media over Zoom on Thursday.

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In addition to providing an update on the status of freshman running back CJ Baxter, Sarkisian explained how the Longhorns fared during practice on the Frank Denius Fields this week in preparation for a road trip to face No. 3 Alabama in Tuscaloosa.

“Last week, I thought we had a good week of preparation and felt good about it,” Sarkisian said. “Our players always seem to go to another level and take me to a space of ‘wow, they have more in there.’ I thought these four days of practice this week have been really good. Thought the intensity has been great. The mental intensity has been on point.”

That type of preparation represents the bare minimum needed when the Crimson Tide are on the docket. In addition to effort, Sarkisian emphasized the need to have the finer details down to a tee ahead of his team’s venture into Bryant-Denny Stadium.

“We’re playing a hard-nosed, tough, physical football team but yet extremely well-coached,” Sarkisian said. “Those details are going to matter in this game in all three phases.”

Here are three things to know from his Zoom.

Multiplicity on defense

Sarkisian has spoken on multiple occasions throughout his Texas tenure about how he wants to be multiple on offense and use various formations, personnel packages, and styles. He typically phrases it as, “we want to be really good at a lot of different things.”

What applies to his offense also applies to the Longhorn defense. Texas defensive coordinator Pete Kwiatkowski, now in his third season in Austin, trotted out a multitude of formations and personnel packages on Saturday versus Rice.

Rice runs a multiple offense, with some heavy packages, some spread packages, and some occupying the middle ground between those two extremes. Kwiatkowski matched it with a variety of defenses, including some with extra D-linemen and others with various looks for specific situations.

Four-man pass-rush pic.twitter.com/itmyOzX1Up

— Unsolicited special assistant to the head coach (@Ian_A_Boyd) September 5, 2023

Texas did have a luxury in that it could play second and third-teamers versus the Owls who were likely to overmatch their first-string counterparts on the Rice offense, and Sarkisian said as much on Thursday. But because of veteran personnel, improved communication, a understanding of the defense, and sheer talent, Texas can show the Crimson Tide offense a variety of looks this weekend.

“As we navigate our way through the season, in certain games we’re going to rely on more things than other things and vice versa as the season goes on,” Sarkisian said. “The players now have some confidence that they can do a multitude of things: zone coverages, man coverages, pressure patterns, secondary pressures, sine stunts at the line of scrimmage, the ability to go to big people to stop the run when you have to do that.

“All those things add up. I think we’re very comfortable with the people that we have and the scheme that we have that we can play a variety of defenses predicated on the style of offenses that we get.”

Bama Benchmark

Texas’ matchup with Alabama isn’t a conference game quite yet. Although this contest won’t affect either team’s league standings, it still represents a way for the Longhorns to see how they measure up with one of the sport’s elite programs.

“I’m looking at this game as a benchmark,” Sarkisian said. “Where are we? We’ve made a lot of strides and we’ve come a long way. I think last year’s game served as a good benchmark and I think it helped us instill some confidence in some players on our team of what they were capable of.”

Even if the road trip doesn’t end in victory, Sarkisian expects to learn a lot about his team. However, his obvious preference is to learn a lot about a team that is 2-0 on the young season rather than 1-1.

“There’s no question we want to go win this ballgame,” Sarkisian said. “We’re putting forth every ounce of effort that we have to try to go do it, like we do every week. But in the end, I think both teams are going to walk out of the stadium with a firm understanding of this is where we’re at, and then this is what we need to do to continue to develop our team for the next 10 regular season games and try to go win the conference championship.”

Practice mindset

Sarkisian mentioned last Thursday’s practice was spotty, leading to a bit of a spotty performance versus Rice. What led to that spottiness isn’t clear, and Sarkisian didn’t want to elaborate on the cause. However, he explained how he wanted to instill a mindset in his team that made having a successful day of practice as every session’s end goal. Stack up enough positive days, and in Sarkisian’s mind, a successful week would be the result.

“When we got done with that Rice game on Saturday night, everybody in their mind thought ‘I want to win at Alabama next Saturday night,'” Sarkisian said. “Okay, what are you going to do Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday to put yourself in position to have an opportunity to win that game?

“Our whole message this week was be present. Be present today. Let’s focus on today, and Saturday will be here soon enough. Let’s focus on today, and that allowed me to really look at each day through a straw and just focus on that day. That gave me a good gauge of where we were at.”

The effort Sarkisian saw led him to believe his team did everything it could in preparation for the Tide.

“It felt good,” Sarkisian said. “It felt right. This week was the way we’re supposed to practice. I feel like we stepped up our level of intensity from last week. Now, moving forward throughout the season, we have to have the ability to sustain that.”

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Odds and ends

• After leaving the game last week, Sarkisian said DJ Campbell returned to practice and “really got better and better as the week went on.”

• Sarkisian added this about Cole Hutson: “Cole Hutson’s back healthy and yes, he’ll be playing as well here Saturday.”

• Quinn Ewers and Maalik Murphy saw action last week, but not Arch Manning: “I had all intentions of playing Arch in that game. I didn’t think the fourth quarter would go as fast as it did, and I didn’t want to put him in there for the last minute and a half and use a game on that.”

• Texas will travel four quarterbacks — Ewers, Murphy, Manning, and Charles Wright — to Tuscaloosa.