Jump to content

  • Texas Longhorns News

    A place for any Longhorn Fan to get the latest news from the On Texas Football team.
    Show all categories
    Jeff Howe
    Whether Arch Manning is out of concussion protocol in time to start at quarterback for No. 20 Texas against No. 9 Vanderbilt at Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium on Saturday (11 a.m., ABC) or Matthew Caldwell makes his Forty Acres starting debut, don’t expect Steve Sarkisian’s offense to change much, if at all.
    “We haven’t changed anything that we’ve done,” Sarkisian said on a Zoom call with reporters after Thursday’s practice. “Our system has been our system.”
    It’s true that Sarkisian’s attack has looked largely the same, no matter which of the five quarterbacks he’s called upon to start in his tenure (Manning, Hudson Card, Casey Thompson, Quinn Ewers and Maalik Murphy) have run the show. Nevertheless, none of those quarterbacks operated the offense the same.
    Manning, who practiced on Thursday but remains in concussion protocol, Sarkisian said, is making progress toward getting back on the field. If he can’t go, however, Sarkisian remains steadfast in his belief that Caldwell’s coaches and teammates “have the utmost confidence and respect” in the Troy transfer to get the job done.
    Regarding how the offense will function with Caldwell at the controls, it’s to Sarkisian’s benefit to play coy and avoid revealing his hand to Clark Lea and the Commodores. Everybody outside the Moncrief Complex has a limited viewing sample of what Caldwell can do, Sarkisian said, “but he gives us a ton of confidence in the way that he practices every day, the way that he works.”
    Between Caldwell’s 2023 season at FCS Gardner-Webb and what he did in five starts with the Trojans in 2024, there are two areas in which he could help Texas (6-2, 3-1 SEC) move the football through the air.
    Five of Caldwell’s seven touchdown passes in 2023 came on pass attempts behind the line of scrimmage. Caldwell earned a 74.3 season-long grade from Pro Football Focus on those throws, going 43-for-47 for 250 yards, which is better than Manning’s 2025 grade on pass attempts behind the line of scrimmage of 70.2 (52-for-54 for 371 yards and no touchdowns). 
    Caldwell had more success on intermediate throws (pass attempts 10-19 yards down the field) at Troy last season, recording a PFF grade of 85.7 (28-for-46 for 433 yards and seven touchdowns against three interceptions). Caldwell’s overtime touchdown pass to Emmett Mosley V in last week’s win over Mississippi State was an intermediate-range throw, a part of the field in which he’s 3-for-4 for 44 yards (a PFF grade of 86.8) and where Manning hasn’t been at his best this season (27-for-54 for 431 yards, two touchdowns and three interceptions).
    Caldwell’s ability to execute screens and quick throws behind the line of scrimmage, along with the intermediate throws that Sarkisian’s play-calls can scheme open, can stabilize an offense that otherwise couldn’t lean on Manning extending the play with his legs, be a factor in the running game or hit chunk-yardage plays on deep balls (on 60 career pass attempts thrown 20 or more yards down the field, Caldwell has completed just 19, throwing two touchdowns against seven interceptions). The Longhorns shouldn’t be expected to run either quarterback much; Manning wouldn’t be asked to run more than necessary for obvious reasons and in addition to Caldwell fumbling seven times (48 official rushing attempts, including sacks) in 2024, his elevation to QB1 would put KJ Lacey one play away from the first meaningful action of his true freshman season.
    The closest thing Texas has had to a recognizable identity on offense is when it relies on Manning’s athleticism to extend plays. Manning's legs have taken pressure off the offensive line and created explosive plays down the field.
    Even if Caldwell can’t do those things, Sarkisian is confident in the offense putting a winning brand of football on the field with the well-traveled veteran at the wheel.
    “The game plan is the game plan,” Sarkisian said. “I think all of his teammates have a ton of confidence in Matt if it’s his time to go.”
    Jeff Howe
    When Davon Booth reeled in a shovel pass from Blake Shapen and weaved through a beleaguered Texas defense for a 62-yard touchdown, which gave Mississippi State a 38-21 lead with 12:29 to go in the fourth quarter of Saturday’s game in Starkville, I thought about 2010.
    Mack Brown’s program carried the weight of a BCS title game loss to Alabama into a season that began with sky-high expectations. Will Muschamp’s defense did what it could to keep the Longhorns afloat, but Greg Davis' listless offense turned the football over enough that the dam eventually broke.
    Fifteen years later, the fate of Steve Sarkisian’s club was all but sealed.
    The 2010 squad went from a 13-1 juggernaut in 2009 to a 5-7 dumpster fire. Even with a win over Oklahoma sandwiched between road losses to Ohio State and Florida, and last Saturday's 16-13 overtime road win over Kentucky, it felt like the 2025 group was headed in the same direction.
    The offense consistently shooting itself in the foot allowed the defense, which was gashed time and again by the Bulldogs, to be overexposed.
    Nevertheless, Deonte Anderson’s personal foul penalty for roughing Arch Manning on a failed fourth-and-1 on the ensuing possession after Booth’s touchdown changed everything.
    With the drive still alive, Manning connected with Emmett Mosley V for a 21-yard touchdown with 9:34 left in regulation, kickstarting a run of 31 unanswered points. Manning went 12-for-20 for 169 yards and two touchdowns in the fourth quarter, persevering through another game in which he was under constant pressure and got little to no relief from a virtually non-existent running game (72 net yards on 32 carries, including the five times Manning was sacked, which lost a total of 29 yards).
    Less than two minutes after Mason Shipley made it a 10-point game with a 26-yard field goal, Ryan Niblett took advantage of Ethan Pulliam's booming 57-yard punt. Pulliam outkicked his coverage down the middle of the field, paving the way for Niblett's game-tying 79-yard touchdown.
    The defense, as it did in last Saturday’s overtime victory over the Wildcats in Lexington, allowed only one first down after the Shapen-to-Booth touchdown, ending a miraculous 45-38 triumph on Ethan Burke’s fourth-and-20 walk-off sack in overtime. The stop came on the heels of Matthew Caldwell making the most of his lone pass attempt, relieving an injured Manning and lofting a 10-yard touchdown to Mosley on second-and-8 in overtime.
    Texas (6-2, 3-1 SEC) defied logic by rallying from 17 points down in the fourth quarter to win. The Longhorns were dead in the water. The on-field meltdown coming on the same day that off-field news surrounding Sarkisian’s future on the Forty Acres dominated the pregame chatter ahead of the team’s fourth consecutive game away from Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium created a perfect storm for a program to be in complete and utter turmoil at the final gun.
    Instead, Sarkisian and the staff will get ready for Texas to welcome a good Vanderbilt team to town next Saturday with all of the team’s season-long goals on the table.
    The Longhorns will head home from Starkville with blemishes that could prevent them from reaching their preferred destination. Chief among them is the health of Manning, who had to be helped off the field after taking a shot at the end of a 13-yard run on the first play of overtime, abruptly ending a day in which he threw for 346 yards and accounted for four touchdowns (three passing and one rushing).
    Nevertheless, Texas is done with a month’s worth of football games played away from home with only one SEC loss on the ledger. Unlike the 2010 Longhorns, Sarkisian’s club is bowl eligible and had enough about it to escape two road games with a pair of too-close-for-comfort victories.
    That’s the bottom line. Texas won back-to-back overtime road games it had little to no business winning.
    It remains to be seen what becomes of a season that started with talk of a return to the College Football Playoff and a possible national championship run. For now, Longhorn fans should take comfort in the fact that this team, as flawed as it is, had enough about it to pull out two wins that could’ve easily gone the other way.
    Jeff Howe
    LEXINGTON, Ky. — Texas won a football game on Saturday.
    That’s almost the full extent of the positives from a sobering 16-13 overtime win over a lowly Kentucky squad at Lexington’s Kroger Field.
    A team shouldn’t apologize for winning a road game in the SEC. Still, Steve Sarkisian’s offense put up a putrid performance, so much so that it nearly wasted an outstanding night on special teams and a defensive effort that, while not dominant, saw the Longhorns dig deep enough on the 86th official snap they defended to finish off a goal-line stand.
    “I always feel like, once a year, you have a culture win where the game is not pretty, but the team — because the team is so close — finds a way to win the game,” Sarkisian said. “Tonight, these guys found a way to win when the game was sliding in the wrong direction. So, absolute credit to our defense. What a tremendous goal-line stand in overtime. What a tremendous job by our special teams — Mason [Shipley], Jack [Bouwmeester], Ryan Niblett, that punt return unit — and the way they played in that phase of the game.”
    The 179 yards of total offense Texas (5-2, 2-1 SEC) posted is the lowest single-game total for the program since a 2015 season-opening loss to Notre Dame.
    Shawn Watson’s offense tallied 163 total yards in the first game of Charlie Strong’s second season, finishing a woeful night in South Bend with an average of 3.1 yards per play with only eight first downs to their credit. Tyrone Swoopes slugged his way to a 7-for-22 night, throwing the football for 93 yards.
    The Longhorns averaged 3.3 yards per play on Saturday. The offense’s anemic production matched the per-play output in a 2022 loss to TCU for the second-worst for a Sarkisian offense on the Forty Acres, trailing only the 3.2 yards per play Texas averaged in a 2021 loss to Iowa State.
    Furthermore, after a low-penalty game against Oklahoma, the offense had two critical infractions late in the game. Those errors contributed to 24 of the Longhorns’ 55 plays coming on passing downs (second-and-8 or longer and third and fourth down with a to-go distance of five or more yards) and 12 plays from scrimmage (not counting two kneel-downs by Manning) that went for no gain or lost yardage.
    “We do some things that are, obviously, very frustrating,” said Sarkisian, whose offense faced six third downs with nine or more yards needed to convert (5-for-16 on third-down attempts). “You get a hold on the first play of overtime. You get a false start in the fourth quarter when we're trying to put the game away. We catch a pass with a minute to go and we go out of bounds without getting the first down, or stay in-bounds and make them use the other timeout. There's little things that we're not doing offensively. We miss open throws. Clearly, I'm not calling enough stuff for our guys to feel good about what we're doing."
    On Saturday, Sarkisian’s offense had half as many three-and-outs (4) as first downs (8).
    Arch Manning, who has been sacked 13 times in four games against Power Four competition, had to try and make something out of nothing too often while, once again, facing an absurd amount of pressure. The Wildcats harassed Manning in 15 of his 32 dropbacks, according to Pro Football Focus, accounting for a 46.9 percent pressure rate.
    When he had time to throw, Manning’s 12-for-27 outing (132 yards) was eerily reminiscent of his performance against UTEP earlier in the season, making this game another that was marred by poor execution and numerous missed opportunities.
    “We've got to find ways to get him more completions,” Sarkisian said of Manning, who was 4-for-9 for 51 yards on third down. One of Manning’s four third-down completions was a 9-yard strike to DeAndre Moore Jr. on a third-and-7 en route to Shipley’s game-tying field goal late in the fourth quarter.
    “There’s some good things there, but there’s some layups that we’ve got to hit for him, too, and that he needs to hit,” Sarkisian said. “We need to find more of those opportunities for him.”
    After the 2015 loss to the Fighting Irish, Strong stripped Watson of play-calling duties and Swoopes was benched in favor of Jerrod Heard. Sarkisian isn’t going to demote himself and he admitted afterward that he didn’t entertain the idea of sitting Manning for a stretch and going with Matthew Caldwell.
    Still, comparing Saturday’s offensive showing against a Kentucky (2-3, 0-3) defense that came into the game allowing 192.7 rushing yards per game in SEC play side by side with a 38-3 bludgeoning at the hands of Notre Dame, a team whose two regular-season losses came to top-12 opponents on the road by a total of four points, frames the historically horrific nature of the offense's attempt to build on their efficient, productive afternoon in last Saturday’s win over Oklahoma.
    Thankfully, Texas continues to put up a united front. The defensive leaders chose to prop the offense up rather than throw the other side of the ball under the bus.
    Even when Sarkisian said the Longhorns’ identity is centered around the defense and kicking game, Colin Simmons, who had three sacks and a forced fumble in the win, felt his coach must've misspoke.
    “We're a team. We're a whole team,” Simmons said. “It ain't just defense and special teams. It's defense, special teams and offense. We've got the offense's back. The offense has got our back and the special teams got both of our backs.”
    Anthony Hill Jr., who had a game-high 12 tackles and notched his first interception of the season, said the defense understands how much it must help the offense right now. Hill indicated the defense is comfortable carrying the load, specifically because Pete Kwiatkowski’s group has the talent, experience and leadership to get the job done.
    “We know we're very young on that side,” Hill said of the offense. “We've got a lot of older guys on defense, so we want to help them out and just keep lifting them up and keep pushing them because we know their time is coming.”
    Even though the Texas offense’s ceiling is significantly lower than anyone expected, a repeat of Saturday’s performance will all but guarantee another loss, especially with the upcoming uptick in competition.
    The offense can't be expected to evolve into a juggernaut. Still, an identity in which winning the field position battle and counting on the defense to keep the opponent’s point total down is the path to victory won’t get Texas anywhere if the offense continues to drag the other two phases down.
    The defense and the punt team could’ve secured one of Kentucky's four combined fumbles. The Wildcats' 7-for-18 night on third down extended too many drives in which the Texas defense had a chance to get off the field.
    Nevertheless, the offense was so bad on Saturday that the Longhorns needed the defense to be elite and the kicking game to be virtually flawless to win. While the bar doesn’t appear to be set very high for what the offense must do to carry its weight, their ability to clear it (and by how much) will determine what becomes of the 2025 season.
    “If our style of game and our style of play is that we're going to play hard-nosed football and we're going to play great on defense and great on special teams, we need to be more efficient on offense with the opportunities that we get,” Sarkisian said. “That's what we need to do offensively, is we've got to minimize the self-inflicted wounds and become more efficient.
    “We just… We weren't efficient enough tonight.”
    Jeff Howe
    LEXINGTON, Ky. — A goal-line stand by the defense and Mason Shipley’s third field goal of the night helped No. 21 Texas avoid a staggering upset on Saturday with a 16-13 overtime road win over Kentucky at Kroger Field.
    On Texas Football has live coverage of the postgame press conference with coach Steve Sarkisian and the Longhorns.
×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

We have placed cookies on your device to help make this website better. You can adjust your cookie settings, otherwise we'll assume you're okay to continue.