whereiend

I believe every single time the offense stalled, it was a result of Sark trying to do 12 personnel (and in particular, slow developing play action passing out of 12). He needs to shelve this crap for good this season IMO. We absolutely shredded Arkansas when spread out in 11 personnel, but then would get behind the chains any time we tried to do 12 just because Sark can't help himself. Someone let Sark know we made it to the national championship game with a bad OL and no TEs one time. We need to run a Colt McCoy style of offense exclusively...

I don't see why Vanderbilt or even OU would have to lose. If we beat A&M have the same conference record as them. The extra loss is because we played Ohio State on the road and they did not... We'd have 3 top 10 wins including head to heads over both of those schools. Particularly Vanderbilt would not have a case over us at all in that scenario.

This. What sent me over the edge is seeing Sark in these press conferences be completely unable to acknowledge that anything has gone wrong. Strongly disagree with OP about Sark being the OC. OC is a full time job. Sark was a good OC 5 years ago but he has fallen behind big time. There is not enough time in the day for him to run our program and stay current as an elite OC. The results of his piss poor offense speak for themselves.

Fair enough. In any case, someone needs to figure out where the hell our NIL budget went? How did we not have dry powder for RB and OL? We have to be smarter on the moneyball front or we aren't winning anything in this era.

I've never said we should fire him, just that he desperately needs an OC. I also think the model of an independent personnel arm is going to be better going forward. Sark is too close to the players to make the hard NIL decisions and as a result we blew a giant budget on a mediocre team.

Eh, Sark failed big time as a GM not upgrading OL in the portal. He then failed big time as an OC not deploying an offensive style that can survive with subpar OL play. He frankly failed as a HC in putting so much faith in Kyle Flood. Why is he failing at so many different aspects of his job? I think it's simply that he is one man (and likely one man with a stressful personal life) and he doesn't have enough time and energy to do three full time jobs. It's not excusable to take on too much work and then fail to deliver. He needs to do a better job of delegating responsibility. (Or CDC needs to do it for him).

I like Sark and I don't want him gone as our coach. I just think he can't be championship level HC, OC, and GM at the same time. At the absolute minimum he needs and OC, and I'd prefer an independent personnel department as well.

It's the portal era, though. Throwing away a season with an inexperienced QB and OL is mismanagement. As Gerry often says there is no longer an excuse for being young.

I'm a massive fan of Sark as a pre-portal/NIL coach. But I think his model is outdated and isn't going to win championships going forward. Roster management in the portal era is a full time job. Coordinating an offense and staying at the top of the game is a full time job. Being a head coach is a full time job. Sark isn't Superman and can't do all of these at an elite level. As long as he tries we will be second place to the programs that do a better job of delegating responsibility.

😂 I want it to be so believe me. But the track record shows that this guy can't do all three of these jobs at the level we need.

Dan Mullen is a good idea honestly. I didn't even think of that. I would totally do Dan Mullen combined with someone running a professional style personnel department. HC being in charge of both is a bad model.

He has the GM title but everyone knows Sark is the real GM, in the professional sports sense of that word. My key point is that someone has to do the job of deciding exactly how much NIL should be spent on Deandre Moore (as a random example) as opposed to going out and getting someone from the portal. It's obviously Sark doing this right now. This is an incredibly important role in the NIL era, and it's a lot of work. Doing this, being the head coach, and also coordinating the offense is absurd. It's no surprise that we look bad on all three of those fronts.

Sark is absolutely the effective GM. He is the one who decides how much of the NIL budget to allocate to each player. There are very few NFL teams that put the HC in charge of this. And then Sark is also the OC and play caller on top of this. It's absurd. No successful professional organization would work this way.

I actually can't tell if you are being serious or sarcastic here. I mean Sark is the god king of the program (HC, OC, GM), so he is responsible for all of these on some level. He built the roster. He called the plays and designed the scheme for the offense. He hired the assistant coaches on defense He coaches the team. The offense has been very mediocre from two straight seasons, and never was really a great unit under Sark. There is zero evidence that he is a particularly great OC as HC at Texas. Greg Davis had much better offenses here than Sark has. The personnel (his work as GM) looks downright bad when you consider where we rank in terms of NIL budget. The team is ridiculously penalty and mistake prone game after game, year after year. The guy is failing at every role he is doing. Again, I don't think he is a bad coach, just delusional. He isn't capable of doing three jobs at once at a high level. There is a reason nobody in the NFL runs the team this way.

The problem with this for me is the way we have looked on the field. Struggled vs UTEP. Extremely lucky to win vs MSU and Kentucky. Ass kicked by Georgia and Florida. If we were last year's Ole Miss team that would be one thing, but to me we look like a team that actually has actually over achieved in the W/L column, we just aren't very good.

From my vantage point there is a clear root cause of the downfall of the football program. It is Sark being the God King (simultaneously HC, GM, and OC). I would argue he has clearly failed in all three capacities. - As a GM he turned one of the largest NIL budgets into an exceptionally mediocre roster, particularly on offense - As an OC he has presented an offense that can't run the ball, can't consistently protect the passer, can't score in the red zone, and can barely pick up first downs against top level opponents - As a HC he has a team that is extremely penalty and mistake prone and incapable of complimentary football I don't think Sark is bad at coaching football, but he is just trying to do way too much. And this is with having some family/personal dynamics that likely prevent the level of workaholism seen in some coaches. The solution is pretty obvious: he needs to shed at least one of these responsibilities and ideally two. We need a real NFL style GM that makes NIL decisions independent of the coaching staff. We need a real offensive coordinator that calls plays and ideally even runs his own system and game planning. Sark needs to be a leader that leads and delegates, not micro manage (poorly) every aspect of the program. Is there any hope of this happening? Is the guy introspective enough to recognize these deficiencies and make changes? Will CDC force his hand? Will he go to the NFL and give us a chance to rebuild the program with a new model (and if so would we take that chance, or just hire a new God King?).

Mack wasn't really great at coaching football but to his credit he delegated responsibility and usually let his staff do their jobs. (In fact his biggest failures were the occasional times he overstepped). Sark insisting that he be personally in charge of coordinating the offense and making personnel decisions is what has made the wheels come off of the program.

I'm over Sark personally. The guy is just too damn stubborn insisting that he personally coordinates his mediocre offense (being very generous) while the rest of the team is an unbelievably undisciplined penalty machine. His best attribute was recruiting which is largely irrelevant in the NIL era. Would love to see the NFL bail us out of this Jimbo-esque conract.

One thing that is very Herman-esque is supposedly hiring an elite OC to be HC and then ending up with horrid offenses. Really damn annoying. I pray Sark hires an OC that runs an offense that college players can execute. I'm over the Sark system. If he can't give up OC duties we need to get a new HC.

Depends on A&M as well. If A&M also only has one loss, then it is a three way tie. In that case, Florida is a common opponent and Georgia is not, which makes us be eliminated.

WTF Sark is actually spreading the field and throwing quick passes with a mediocre OL. Who could have possibly predicted that this might be better than 12 personnel tight formations?? Let's follow the game plan that almost won us a national title with mediocre OL play during the Colt era.

Any hope that these rumours could be true and offensive genius Sark will be off our hands for zero buyout?

Sark has a massive Jimbo-esque guaranteed contract from UT. Would be idiotic for an NFL team to match that IMO. So are we saying Sark is going to take a pay cut and or risk tens of millions to go pro? I don't see how it makes sense on that level. Honestly I don't think it's the worst for UT to get out of his contract at this point. Not smart to do these deals in the NIL era.

The projection systems like FPI and SP+ still have us rating fairly highly, and I think Vegas reflects that. But, I don't think this is "we've been better than it looks", it's just that these systems have a ton of preseason input in the form of previous seasons and recruiting rankings. Basically they are saying "Texas can't actually be this bad, right?". Unfortunately I think we just may be..

Yes, I mean that is how 90% of the NFL does it for a number of reasons. Not saying I'd want Nagy specifically.