Sark Believes Time Together, Not A Reshuffling, Will Improve OL Play

Texas head coach Steve Sarkisian isn’t ready to tinker with his offensive line, even though their performance has been offensive of late.

“I think the guys that we have playing need to play more together,” Sarkisian said during his weekly press conference.

Both the Louisiana Ragin’ Cajuns and the Arkansas Razorbacks challenged the Texas O-line with new schemes, and Sarkisian’s pro-style offense asks a lot of the young men as well from a schematics perspective. The line’s slow start to the season could be a perfect storm of bad luck and needing time to acclimate to a new offense.

“We didn’t trust our principles and trust our training and fall back on the things that we had been building for eight months,” Sarkisian said. “That’s something that we have to get fixed. I don’t think it was about manpower or physicality or talent. It was doing what you’re supposed to do down in and down out and that’s a very fixable problem.”

The season is still young and adjustments are expected, but significant structural issues in the trenches always reflect extremely poorly on the coaching staff. The O-line coach for Texas, Kyle Flood, makes $1.1 million as the offensive coordinator, too, so Longhorn fans have to be wondering if his priorities are out of whack at the moment.

Flood may have seen this coming, though, based on some of his comments during the preseason in which he noted that building good lines takes time and chemistry. Sarkisian seemed to echo that sentiment, as well.

“I think over time they’ll play better and better together,” Sarkisian said.

Texas hosts interstate rival Rice in Austin this Saturday at 8PM ET.