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Updates from Steve Sarkisian's SEC Championship preview press conference

Joe Cookby:Joe Cook•12/02/24•

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Steve Sarkisian
Steve Sarkisian (Will Gallagher/Inside Texas)

Here are a few of the need-to-know updates from Steve Sarkisian‘s Monday press conference. The full video can be seen at this link.

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Steve Sarkisian: “What an atmosphere and what a turnout by Longhorn nation on Saturday night. Can’t thank everybody enough for their support on the road. Really proud of our guys on the road over the last couple of seasons. That’s 11 straight road wins for us.”

Steve Sarkisian: “How we responded to adversity I thought was really critical Saturday night as well. When you look at Kelvin Banks getting injured seven plays into the game, you lose your starting All-American left tackle, and in comes Trevor Goosby, I didn’t think anybody blinked. He didn’t. The guys around him didn’t, and he played a heck of a game for us all the way.”

Steve Sarkisian: “Georgia and Kirby (Smart) have been the standard for College Football for about the last eight years.”

Steve Sarkisian notes they’ve held a lead at halftime for every game but the Georgia contest. “Essentially a road game for us, going to Atlanta to play Georgia. We’ve got to pack the things necessary to put ourselves in position to have some success Saturday.”

Steve Sarkisian notes that most staffs around the country are solely focused on working the phones while his and Georgia’s have to recruit and game plan. They’re working to find a balance, he explained: “We still have to find those times to recruit.”

Steve Sarkisian on Quinn Ewers: “He practiced today, and it’ll be very similar to last week.”

Steve Sarkisian: “Everybody wants to win Saturday. What are you doing today to put yourself in a better position to win on saturday? That’s the challenge that I posed to the team and to them as a team, but also them individually.”

Steve Sarkisian on the precious nature of the bye: “If you get the bye, you’ve got about 3.5 weeks or so. I don’t know what the exact number is. I would love to get as healthy as we can get. But ideally, nobody’s going to be 100% healthy at this point of the season.”

Steve Sarkisian on Michael Taaffe, says that when he first arrived at UT and there were player-run practices without coaches every player would bring up Taaffe and what he did in those sessions: “All he did from the day he got here was lead. He never took a back seat from a leadership standpoint. Two, all he did was give whatever he had… What that guy has done has squeezed his lemon to get all of the juice out of the thing that’s been in there. Then in the offseason, he’s built himself up to be a better player, a faster player, a more physical player, a better understanding of our scheme to where when he plays there’s a great deal of confidence in him.” — “I definitely think he’s a NFL prospect.”

Steve Sarkisian on his team’s physicality: “I think it’s gone upward from a consistency standpoint. I think we’ve had moments where we’ve been a very physical football team.”

Steve Sarkisian on Kelvin Banks: “Kelvin, he really is in a situation that I guess is kind of similar to Quinn. It’s going to be a process throughout the week to see what he can look like as we get closer to gameday. But, it was a good start to the week for him.”

Sark on Trey Moore “He’s had a really good year for us, and I’ve been proud of him to sticking to it.” — “All of a sudden now in the most critical games and the most critical moments, those players are starting to show and he’s starting to make these plays for us.”

Since the Georgia loss, what has Steve Sarkisian learned?: “I thought we had good leadership; I found out we do have good leadership.”

Sarkisian: “We talk quite a bit about being a steady sea,” Sarkisian said about conversations with Ewers. “Although a lot of things around us may be rocky and whatnot, our minds, our hearts, our souls, are a steady sea. And I think Quinn is the epitome of that.”

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Steve Sarkisian: “These guys genuinely love one another. You could feel it. You could feel it when we got off the bus in College Station. I don’t know if that was intentional or not, but they drove us through all of their fans and it was probably the best thing they could of done quite frankly. Because at that moment, it alerted us to what we had to do.”

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