Jeff Howe

No doubt. Ready to see a clean performance from the Longhorns.

Time to put Ohio State in the rearview mirror and start seeing some growth from the Longhorns.

Steve Sarkisian’s truest words between last Saturday’s 14-7 road loss to Ohio State and the 2025 home opener against San Jose State on Saturday (11 a.m., ABC) came during his weekly press conference on Monday. Sarkisian was addressing the Spartans, specifically his respect for Ken Niumatalolo as a coach. Aside from the kind words, Sarkisian wrapped up his opening statement by pointing out where the Longhorns' attention should be while building toward the SEC opener, on the road against No. 13 Florida on Oct. 4. “Good challenge, good opportunity for us, but this week is really about us and what we do, and everybody in the organization being coachable and striving to get better this week,” Sarkisian said. “It's a lot of internal focus for us.” How Texas gets the job done is more important than running San Jose State (0-1), which dropped a 16-14 decision at home to Central Michigan last Friday, out of Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium like a five-touchdown favorite should do. The team’s three remaining non-conference games are an opportunity to establish an identity, something that’s desperately needed on offense after a largely forgettable afternoon in Columbus. It's imperative to fix the red zone issues. The Longhorns have scored just three touchdowns in 10 red-zone trips over their last four losses. Still, execution inside the 20 isn’t the only area where the offense has to find itself before attempting to navigate an SEC schedule. Texas was 5-for-14 on third down and 1-for-5 on fourth down against the Buckeyes. The Longhorns had a three-and-out in a two-minute situation before the end of the first half and ended a potential game-tying drive (with possession of the ball at their 15-yard line with 2:26 left in regulation) by turning the ball over on downs. Sarkisian’s club will be left wanting against the more formidable opponents on the schedule if situational football continues to be executed with such ineptitude. The more snaps Arch Manning logs running Sarkisian’s offense, the better the Longhorns can be. That’s if the two are on the same page, which means Manning has to execute and trust what Sarkisian dials up when playmaking opportunities arise. It's also on Sarkisian to have a better working knowledge of which portions of his call sheet will help Manning succeed situationally, especially how to most effectively start drives (the offense averaged 5.2 yards per play on first down in the loss to Ohio State, but the running game averaged 5.9 yards per attempt, while Manning was 6-for-13 through the air for 58 yards). The Spartans averaged the third-most pass attempts per game in FBS last season (42.5). Their run-and-shoot style of offense should be conducive to Pete Kwiatkowski’s defense negatively impacting Walker Eget (24-for-43, 308 yards, two touchdowns and two interceptions in San Jose State’s opener) far more than how often Texas got to Julian Sayin, with the game plan put together by Ryan Day and Brian Hartline minimizing the risks taken by the redshirt freshman. Even though Pro Football Focus only charged the Longhorns with two missed tackles in the opener, Sarkisian wants to see a more conservative effort from Texas defenders to force turnovers (the 2023 team’s loss to Oklahoma was the last game in which the Longhorn defense failed to record a takeaway before last week’s loss to the Buckeyes). “I thought we played with really good effort, which didn't put us in a lot of one-on-one tackle situations. We had multiple white hats around the ball to get people on the ground,” Sarkisian said during his pregame Zoom call on Thursday. “That's going to be important in this game because the run-and-shoot creates space, and half of that offense is — get the completion, make the first guy miss in the open field. Owning our leverage, wrapping when we tackle — not just trying to knock people to the ground, but wrapping up — and then the second man coming in, attacking the football, I think, is going to be big as we continue to move forward.” Although there’s no silver lining to the Ohio State loss, Texas knows exactly where it must improve with four weeks to go until the Longhorns head to the Swamp to tangle with the Gators. While Sarkisian’s club should travel to Gainesville with a 3-1 record in tow, how Texas approaches the next three games will go a long way toward determining how many notches the Longhorns will put in the win column when the level of competition picks back up. “What do we do on Monday morning to get ourselves prepared for a ball game? What do we do to try to minimize players looking too far down the road and focus on the task at hand, of what's right in front of them?” Sarkisian said Thursday. “It's not so much about what anybody outside the building thinks or doesn't think, it's truly what I believe. I've been doing this long enough to know that human nature is human nature, and we can get caught in that trap, so sometimes you coach them harder. Sometimes you point out the slightest of details that could be off to make sure that the screws are tightened up really tight and that we're ready to play.” View full news story

These quotes and Sark's breakdown of the Ohio State game are from his opening statement today, which you can find the bulk of right here (it starts at the 1:10 mark):

AUSTIN, Texas — Steve Sarkisian opened his press conference on Monday, more than 48 hours after Texas kicked off the 2025 season with a 14-7 road loss to Ohio State, with his thoughts after reviewing the game. Sarkisian’s film study confirmed that the Longhorns left too many yards, opportunities and points on the field at the Horseshoe to avenge their College Football Playoff semifinal loss to the Buckeyes in January. A streak of 24 consecutive games forcing at least one turnover was snapped (a 34-30 loss to Oklahoma in 2023 was the last game in which the Texas defense failed to record a takeaway). Three penalties charged to the defense (illegal hands to the face calls against Colin Simmons and Liona Lefau and a defensive holding call against Malik Muhammad) aided a touchdown drive and wiped out a safety, which put the Longhorns on the losing end of a nine-point swing. Even with Jack Bouwmeester averaging 46.2 yards per punt, with three of his four punts pinning Ohio State inside its 10-yard line, Sarkisian said Texas must be better at playing complementary football, beginning with Saturday’s home opener against San Jose State (11 a.m., ABC). “I thought in the first half we had some really good field position that we didn't capitalize on offensively, that the defense and special teams got us,” Sarkisian said. “Conversely, we had some good field position on defense. “I just didn't think we did a good enough job of pinning them deep and flipping the field back in our favor.” Obviously, the offense going 1-for-5 on fourth down, with two turnovers on downs occurring in the red zone, isn't conducive to winning games against elite-level competition. “We were aggressive initially, obviously, with the first fourth-down sneak, and then the fourth-and-2, which we didn't convert,” Sarkisian said. “A couple of the fourth downs late were, kind of, because of the situation, we, kind of, had to go for them. They were what they were.” On the other side of the coin, Sarkisian liked his team’s fight. The offense “played much better in the second half,” he said. Arch Manning and the Longhorns tallied 257 total yards on 41 plays from scrimmage (6.3 yards per play) and recorded six of their seven explosive plays (four pass completions of 15 yards or more and two rushing attempts of 10 yards or more). He came away pleased with what Texas generated on the ground (166 yards on 37 official rushing attempts). With Quintrevion Wisner (16 carries for 80 yards) and C.J. Baxter (10 carries for 40 yards) leading the way, the Longhorns averaged 4.5 yards per rushing attempt as a team (the Buckeyes allowed 4.5 or more yards per carry in just three of their previous 29 games, a stretch in which the Ohio State defense held opponents to under 100 yards rushing). “I think our ability to run the football was evident in the game,” Sarkisian said. “To go into that environment against that defense, to rush for just about 170 yards, I thought, was good for us.” Pete Kwiatkowski’s defense held the Buckeyes to 3.8 yards per play, 2.3 yards per rushing attempt, a 3-for-12 effort on third down and just two explosive plays (a 16-yard reception by Jeremiah Smith and Julian Sayin’s 40-yard touchdown pass to Carnell Tate) on 54 snaps. “I thought, defensively, we played a very good football game,” Sarkisian said. Individually, Sarkisian singled out a few Longhorns for their performances in all three phases. “I was proud and happy for Cedric Baxter. I think he had 15 touches in the game, his first game back not playing for a year — 10 rushes, five receptions,” Sarkisian said. “I thought Manny Muhammad competed his tail off Saturday against a great player in Jeremiah Smith. I thought Jack Bouwmeester was fantastic. He's a weapon for us in the punt game. I thought to have four [new] full-time starters on the offensive line [Trevor Goosby, Connor Stroh, Cole Hutson and Brandon Baker], and the way that they performed was definitely encouraging. I think Arch, in the second half, I thought we started to see the glimpses of what he's capable of. Sarkisian wrapped up his thoughts on the loss to the Buckeyes before fielding questions on Monday with a message befitting a coach and a team looking to turn the page after learning a lot about themselves. “A lot to look forward to this season, I think, of where this team can go,” he added. “We've got a ton of potential. Now, we've got to make that come to life.” View full news story

It's not hate, just the reality sinking in that the freshmen might not be as far along as some (me included) had hoped they'd be. They need to get Emmett Mosley on the field.

Pretty quick media session with Arch today. He sounds like a man who’s ready to get back on the field.

Arch: “I’m determined. This is going to motivate me to play better.”

Arch said after he’s done with media, he’s going back to the Moncrief Complex to get some recovery treatment and get in a lift in the weight room.

Arch: “I’ve got to execute better on first and second down when we get into the red area.”

Arch said he had lunch with his parents yesterday and dinner with his brother last night. He said his family always has his back and it was good to be around them after a tough day.

Arch: “We have to play better on offense and that starts with me.”

Arch said “it was more on us” regarding diagnosing what Ohio State was doing on the fly and trying to execute against Matt Patricia’s defense.

Arch wants to work on getting the ball out quicker and to his guys in space compared to how he did it against Ohio State.

Arch has said in several ways, shapes and forms that he has to play better for Texas to win.

We’re meeting with Arch right now. On what he liked about his performance: “There wasn’t much to like.”

That's it for Sark today.

Sark: "It's hard to string together 15 plays in a row without screwing something up."

They showed the defense opportunities where they could've attacked the ball and the plan is to work on maximizing those in practice leading up to the San Jose State game.

Sark: "We've got a high football IQ defense."

Sark: "I thought he responded well to that."