Why Steve Sarkisian believes he’s still the right play-caller for Texas

At the end of the 2024 Texas Longhorns football season, there were questions coming from both those within the Texas fan base and national college football spheres wondering whether Steve Sarkisian should continue to call offensive plays.

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Those who thought he should pass the play-sheet pointed toward the fact that the Ohio State team that knocked the Longhorns out of the College Football Playoff had a head coach whose decision to cede play-calling to a well-known offensive mind led to tremendous success. The shift, along with an extremely talented and experienced roster, helped the Buckeyes win their first national title under Ryan Day.

However, the questions about Sarkisian’s play-calling were amplified by disappointment with struggles in the red zone that spanned the entire season.

“We’ve just got to execute, man,” Sarkisian said Monday. “That was a frustrating deal for us. That’s coaching. You feel like you practice something seven times, maybe you need to practice it eight. That’s our job as coaches to get that done.”

There was also other evidence used to argue that Sarkisian should give up play-calling, namely that the last play-calling head coach to win a national championship was Jimbo Fisher at Florida State in 2013. A number of other play-calling head coaches had made the CFP, namely Lincoln Riley, Day himself, and Sarkisian. But none had been able to reach the mountaintop in the CFP era as Fisher’s title was in the last season of the BCS.

Sarkisian was asked about play-calling again on Monday, but the tone of the question was a little different. It wasn’t ‘are you good enough at this to keep doing it?’

It was, ‘do you have enough time to do all this other stuff and call plays?’

Sarkisian, who was able to speak about a number of assistant coaching and personnel department hires on Monday, believes the answer to that question remains yes.

“The one thing for me is, I’ve always tried to hire really good people and making sure I’m engaged with them in a way where they can — I don’t want to say think like me — but have an understanding of how I would think and how I would handle situations as we come,” Sarkisian said. “I try not to micromanage. Obviously, I try to set a foundation for what I believe in and what we’re about.

“I try to make those critical decisions, especially the ones off the field almost beforehand before those situations arise. Again, I feel like we’ve assembled the staff on and off the field of really high-level people and creative thinkers, forward thinkers. We tend not to use the answer ‘we’ve never done that before.’ We tend not to fall prey to ‘this is how we’ve always done it.’ We always try to look at things holistically and say what’s best for the players and what’s best for the organization. So, on that aspect of it, it doesn’t put more on me that way because I’ve got a lot of trust int he people that we hired.”

Sarkisian pointed to the years of experience together that he, offensive coordinator and offensive line coach Kyle Flood, assistant head coach, tight ends coach, and special teams coordinator Jeff Banks, and co-offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach AJ Milwee have together. He also highlighted that wide receivers coach and passing game coordinator Chris Jackson is set to embark on his third season with Sarkisian. Plus, other staffers like assistant quarterbacks coach and co-passing game coordinator Michael Bimonte and new addition Neal Brown provide perspective and insight in alignment with Sarkisian’s offensive vision not just in the offseason, but on a week-to-week basis in the mind of the Longhorns head coach.

It’s not as if Sarkisian’s methods are failing. Texas is 25-5 over the past two seasons, with only the 34-30 loss to No. 12 Oklahoma in 2023 occurring against a team ranked outside of the top 10. His 2024 signing class was ranked sixth in the nation by On3 and featured four top-50 prospects.

In the 2025 cycle? He went out and signed the top-ranked group with five five-star prospects.

Recruiting hasn’t dipped, and Sarkisian has even strengthened that department with significant hires like Errin Joe and Josh Dunson from Georgia Tech and Memphis, respectively.

Plus, Sarkisian has a general manager in Brandon Harris to help him with some of the nitty-gritty of recruiting. Harris makes $600,000, more than many assistant coaches around the Power Four, in order to help Sarkisian with critical roster decisions.

With all that in mind, Sarkisian doesn’t have any plans to hand over the call-sheet to someone like Flood, Milwee, or an outside voice similar to Chip Kelly at Ohio State. But if he thinks the program needs it, Sarkisian believes he’ll be able to pass off those responsibilities.

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“If that day ever comes when I don’t, my ego is not too big to where I wouldn’t be able to pass that off,” Sarkisian said. “As of today, I feel comfortable doing those things.”