'You have to practice football to get good at football': Texas' camp balances prep, psychology, physicality

At the first sign of possible trouble or upon news of the first major injury in preseason training camp, fans often reflexively ask for the players to be placed “bubble wrap” until the season opener. Football is a collision sport as Bud Elliott likes to say, and each time there’s a collision, especially in fully-padded tackle-to-the-ground portions of practice, there’s a risk of injury.

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But that’s part of playing football. That’s part of life as a football player and life as a football coach. In order to get ready to play tackle football, teams have to practice the core part of tackle football and not live in worry about what calamities might come.

Texas and Steve Sarkisian mitigated this reality — some — during spring practices. The Longhorns didn’t play a public spring game, but they did have a final spring scrimmage. That capped a 15-practice block that Sarkisian described as being more akin to NFL OTAs.

OTA is short for organized team activity. The NFL rules state that OTAs can’t have live contact but can consist of 7-on-7 and 11-on-11 drills with helmets.

College football isn’t subject to a collective bargaining agreement (yet) that places strict guidelines on what OTAs can look like, but it’s safe to assume that Texas’ spring drills featured some contact but were a bit more limited in that area than in years prior. That doesn’t preclude the Longhorns from wearing shoulder pads and even going full pads for thud or tackle-to-the-ground sessions.

But in preseason camp? These practices have a purpose. Depth chart battles. Offensive and defensive installs. And, of course, getting ready for the season. To do that, there needs to be physicality.

Sarkisian was asked Tuesday if they plan to alter how they approach the preseason especially as it pertains to scrimmages, which function as the true proving grounds for players before the games count. The backdrop to the question was Andre Cojoe‘s injury that will cost him the 2025 campaign. Sarkisian said they had to continue because there’s a season to get ready for and a stout opponent in Ohio State around the corner on August 30.

“I don’t know if we adjust our scrimmages so much early in camp,” Sarkisian said. “We need that information. We need to find out. We need to give guys opportunities to tackle. That’s the only (way) we can gain information on guys tackling and guys getting tackled. We tackled for a portion of practice today, which we needed to do.

“That information is needed for the coaching staff and for the players. You have to do it because we have to play a real game on August 30th, too. We’re going to have to get some real people on the ground or that could be a long day. We’re going to get tackled by good people. You have to practice football to get good at football.”

To be sure, Sark was speaking about scrimmages specifically. But there are full-contact portions of practice, too. “Team run,” a period where the only two offensive options are to run the ball or play-action pass, is a portion of the day that arguably demands the most physicality. It’s the “when the defense knows what’s coming and you have to get the yards” part of practice. It’s on Sark to know how many to add to a given day and when to deploy them throughout the week, as well as when to just “thud” without any tackling to the ground.

But the program needs those periods. And believe it or not, players look forward to those opportunities.

“In the huddle, everybody be turnt,” Malik Muhammad said Thursday. “When we know that team run period is coming and we’re about to go live, everybody be turnt, ready to tackle, and ready to play football and get to the season.”

Full-on scrimmages and other contact periods throughout the week aren’t just beneficial for the physical preparation for a season. Those sessions are not limited in usefulness to improving mental preparedness, either. There’s a psychology aspect to playing football in order to get better at playing football, which Sarkisian expanded on during his Tuesday appearance in a way reminiscent of Nick Saban‘s old press conference lectures.

Players have to know what completed passes feel like. They have to know what interceptions, which Muhammad recorded a couple of earlier in the week, feel like. They have to know what tackles feel like. They have to know what missed tackles feel like. Then, they have to get up and do it again.

Iron sharpens iron 🤘 pic.twitter.com/jJgQS7u3b0

— Texas Football (@TexasFootball) August 7, 2025

Sarkisian was speaking to how the offense might be a bit behind the defense currently, something he sees as being normal for early in camp. But his message applies to all three phases and arguably every team in the nation.

“One thing for us that I think with players that are trying really hard, we have to learn how to deal with disappointment a little bit better,” Sarkisian said. “What I mean by disappointment is not every play is going to go perfect. You might miss a block. You might not catch that ball. You might not get the yardage you thought you were going to get on the run. But you’ve got to get onto the next play, and you have to give the next play the credit it deserves because that next play has a life of its own.

“I think right now, a little bit on offense, we’re trying so hard that there’s this level of disappointment that we’re carrying some of that to the next play, and some of those mistakes are compounding on top of one another for certain players. We’ve got to improve upon that. As a coach once you can identify that, we can talk to that, we can coach to that. I think that’s something we can improve upon.”

This is what this portion of camp is for. Texas will hold its first full scrimmage on Saturday, then go through another week of camp, and hold another scrimmage after that before adding more and more Ohio State prep to the players’ routine. The annual “mock game,” comes the week before the season. There, Texas will practice what it’s like to run out of the locker room, get ready for an opponent, as well as other various situations like if Trevor Goosby lost his shoe at left tackle or if the opponent is going for it with a heavy personnel package on 4th and 1 at the Longhorns’ 34-yard-line and Texas needs to substitute.

The mental build-up is important, but so too is the similar physical and psychological process. Skipping steps puts you a step behind. Sarkisian doesn’t plan to let fear of the worst-case scenario drastically affect how his team gets ready to play a sport where down after down elite athletes run into each other at full speed and make split-second decisions that determine the outcome of a play.

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It’d be a disservice to his program and its chances of winning if he did.