The University of Texas at Austin Athletics
Video: Steve Sarkisian press conference
08.28.2023 | Football
Football head coach Steve Sarkisian discusses the Longhorns' season opener against Rice.
Texas Head Coach Steve Sarkisian Opening Statement
Game week! Awesome time of the year. It felt odd on Saturday after our mock game, going home and watching college football and not being part of it, so I'm not sure how week zero works, but obviously this is an exciting time for us, our fans and our students. We have got a veteran opponent coming to town – Rice is a team that has a great deal of experience, returning a lot of starters, especially on the defensive side of the ball, and they have a quarterback (senior JT Daniels) who has played with a ton of experience. He's played here twice in his career. They're hard-nosed, tough and they have very intricate schemes. So, we have our work cut out for us from a preparation standpoint. I am excited that we get to have our fans [and students] back in DKR. It's going to be an exciting time, a great atmosphere. I know we're doing a couple of cool things on Saturday; honoring Derrick Johnson going into the Hall of Fame Saturday and honoring the 1963 national championship team. So, those are all great events kind of surrounding the game. But for us, it's about our preparation. When we prepare our best, we have great energy every day, we walk in the building every day and we go on the practice field. We have a really good focus, being intentional with what we're doing to get ourselves prepared for the ballgame. That's what it's going to take. We get challenged by Rice in two ways, most notably, one, their style of play. Like I said, it is very intricate in all three phases – (they have) really good coaches. And then in which the way they play, they play hard; they play tough, they're relentless that way. So we have our work cut out for us on that. As far as injury wise, the only one real thing right now is that (senior linebacker) Morice Blackwell is going to be down for a couple of weeks. Everybody else on the roster will be available to us this week, which is a good thing. But at the end of the day, it comes down to our standard, the way we live, and the way we go about it, and that's why this week's going to be no different today, tomorrow, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, then ultimately Saturday. We have to have great energy. We have got to play our style, which is aggressive, fast, physical, and then we have to be tough and we have to be smart. This is our first shot at putting all that together. And hopefully by 2:30 on Saturday, we'll be ready to go.
On what he wants to see from the team on the field on Saturday
Inevitably, I want to see us execute. All of that is kind of encompassed into that, whether it's pre-snap or post-snap, our ability to execute, communicate really well, be on the same page, and then play our style of football.
On the offense with changes at the running back position
I think naturally, when you lose two players like Bijan [Robinson] and Roschon [Johnson], who carried such a bulk of the load for us a year ago, what does that going to look like? How's it going to feel? I think it's going to be a little bit of a process for us, and that's okay. I think that they have great players around them. They don't have to go in and try to make some superhuman effort. They just need to do what they've done throughout practice. I think that we have a good group there, but ultimately, finding that out. We had a glimpse of it in the bowl game, but I think now having a spring, a summer, a training camp to get themselves ready, I'm looking forward to watching that group play.
On defensive tackle T'Vondre Sweat, wide receiver Xavier Worthy and others taking on leadership roles
That's always the challenge, every year it's different. Every year, the personality of your team is a little bit different, predicated on who are some of those guys that are veterans, the older players that are a little bit more comfortable. But I think this, one thing about it: you can be loose, but when the ball snaps, how do you play? And neither of those guys play a loose brand of football when that ball snaps. They're very intentional, and they're very smart players. They study, they know what to do, how to do it, and why we're doing it. And inevitably, they don't want it where everybody's so tight, they can't function, but yet, they've got to make sure we're honed in on our crossing every T, dotting every I, and understanding. So to do it, they have to exemplify that, and I think that's something we challenged our veteran players with: your work ethic, the way you train in the weight room, the way we do our walkthroughs, the way we go about our scout periods, the way we go good on good, how we practice, how we prepare, is going to serve as a model for how the younger players are going to do it moving forward. I think that the veteran group does that in a way where younger players recognize the importance of the little things. And then when it's time to go play, trust your training, and that's when you can be a little bit more loose and a little bit more confident that you put in the work to prepare to play well.
