David Hookstead
Videos by OutKick
Texas football coach Steve Sarkisian wasn’t impressed by some members on the 2021 roster.
The Longhorns limped to a 5-7 record last season and suffered embarrassing losses to Arkansas, Iowa State and Kansas along the way.
In Sarkisian’s eyes, one of the issues was that there were some “warts” and “bad apples” on the team.
“The kids knew not everybody in that locker room was all-in last year. I think they could feel it, and they wanted to weed out some of the warts, some of the bad apples,” Sarkisian told ESPN.
He further added, “I think they got a sense of reality about some of the things we were talking about and trying to instill last offseason. I don’t know how much they gave credence to it, and then those same things reared their ugly head in-season. They came back in January with this mindset of, ‘We’ve got to take these things to heart because they will show up again.’ They’ve made that investment and bought into every aspect of it, and you can feel it amongst our team.”
You know things are less than ideal when a coach calls unnamed players on an old roster “warts” and “bad apples.”
Generally speaking, coaches like to keep their dirty laundry behind closed doors. When things like this go public, it only creates more questions than it answers.
However, there’s no doubt Texas appears to be trending in the right direction. Sarkisian is building a culture in Texas, he has Quinn Ewers back in the state and there seems to be positive buzz around the team.
That’s a lot different than dealing with “warts” and “bad apples.”
Now, the clock is definitely ticking on seeing some success under the Sarkisian regime. With Arch Manning arriving next season, he has at least a couple more years of a runway before he absolutely needs to be putting up monster results on the field.
If 2024 gets here and the Longhorns are still struggling, Steve Sarkisian will have a lot more than “warts” and “bad apples” to worry about.
