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Texas head football coach Steve Sarkisian strongly believes that penalties led to their downfall against Georgia, a fatal flaw they worked on, and improvised between the SEC Championship, and their first College Football Playoff game against Clemson.
“We had a real come-to-Jesus meeting after the SEC Championship game when we essentially lost that game because of penalties, and we just said, we’re not going to do that anymore, and we’re going to play as clean a football as we can play, as fundamentally sound football as we can play, still be aggressive,” Sarkisian said in his press conference previewing the Peach Bowl, per On3.
Sarkisian admitted confidently that the Longhorns locker room underwent a seismic shift following the loss to the Bulldogs, making sure that the problem of penalties never wrote their doom again.
“We never want to lose our stinger and we never want to lose our aggressive, but we can play smarter. We’re continually trying to preach playing smarter football as well as playing hard and playing tough and playing physical,” the Longhorns coach added.
For Texas, unfortunately, the concerns don’t end with fixing their penalty problems. The Longhorns struggle with some other offensive straits as well — which are said to bring potential problems if not addressed soon.
Starting QB Quinn Ewers is suffering from an injury, for starters. Not to mention that he had a pretty bumpy season. Even if Ewers comes through, like he did vs. Clemson, Texas would need their offense to be as good as their defense had been.
If Sarkisian can break the code to it, as he did for penalties, the Longhorns might be a serious contender for the National Title, as many believe them to be.
Texas next faces the Big 12 Champions Arizona State in College Football Playoff quarterfinals on New Year’s Day.