Texas football’s rise from irrelevancy, explained

Kevin Jairaj-USA TODAY Sports

Texas is back. Here’s how the Longhorns finally rose to college football relevancy once again.

“This work will be all gas and no brakes,” was Steve Sarkisian’s motto he shared when the Texas Longhorns introduced him as the 28th head coach in program history on January 12, 2021. Sarkisian’s slogan represented the type of attacking football he wanted to play, backed by cultural lessons learned as the offensive coordinator at Alabama. In addition, he wanted staff capable of fixing a longstanding issue at Texas — the inability to develop talent.

The hire came about quickly behind the alignment of Board of Regents chairman Kevin Eltife, new university president Jay Hartzell, and athletics director Chris Del Conte, a rarity during the doldrums of Texas football’s wasted decade that often featured dysfunction at one or more levels of the administration, contributing to the end of the Mack Brown era, the failed three-year tenure of Charlie Strong, and Tom Herman’s inability to capitalize on the promise of his Sugar Bowl win in 2019.

“I don’t think it’s going to take us as long as many might think. We’ve got a talented roster. I think we’re going to hire a tremendous coaching staff. And we’re going to continue to recruit the best players in the state of Texas,” said Sarkisian in his introductory press conference.

In the three short years since then, Sarkisian has managed to bring the Longhorns back from the depths of irrelevancy and into the national spotlight once again. After a less than promising five-win season in 2021, under his leadership, Texas has risen steadily each year, winning eight games in 2022, and now earning the program’s first-ever appearance in the College Football Playoffs behind a 12-1 season capped.

Sarkisian’s plan is working.

“It’s the best Texas team I’ve seen in years,” a Big 12 offensive analyst told The Athletic. “It’s not even close. Outside of the talent, it’s the most disciplined, as well as the toughest. They were always gonna be the most talented, but we always thought we’d be the tougher team and we could get to them mentally. I think they’re very disciplined, more so than they’ve ever been. That’s a great compliment to Sark.”

What factors in Sarkisian’s program turned the infamous phrase “Texas is Back” from a national punchline into an ugly relic of the past?

Culture, development, recruiting and scheme have brought championship-level success back to the Forty Acres for the first time since 2009.

Culture

“Culture beats talent if your culture is really strong,” Sarkisian said ahead of the Longhorns last game of the regular season against Texas Tech, a runaway 57–7 victory. “Culture is organic — it’s not a sign up in your building, it’s not a t-shirt that you wear, it’s not breaking the team down and saying culture on three. I can’t just say those things. We have to live those things.”

If Texas missed one single, crucial aspect under Strong and Herman, it was a strong culture with fully bought-in players led by a coaching staff worthy of their trust. Even with all the talent in the world, a program without a defined and organic culture will always fold.

When Sarkisian first accepted the job, he faced road blocks that would be difficult to navigate for any head coach in their first year with a new program.

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Texas Longhorns head coach Steve Sarkisian talks with UT Athletic Director Chris Del Conte before the game with Alabama.

In 2021, Texas was displaced from the south end zone football facility by renovations that forced them into the visitor’s locker room and various other spots at the other end of the stadium.

“In the moment, I didn’t realize the effect that our being displaced was having,” Sarkisian said.

The Longhorns went on to finish the season 5-7, missing out on bowl season for the first time since 2016. The burnt orange faithful began to worry Sarkisian was just another Charlie Strong.

A major turning point in where the program was and where it would end up going came after a 30-7 loss to Iowa State late in the 2021 season that produced a now-legendary, and extremely profane, rant by Texas defensive line coach Bo Davis.

“We didn’t play very good, kind of got our butts kicked, and it was one of those moments that I guess in a weird way, fortunately that situation on the bus got out. But I think you could feel the passion in Bo’s voice of what all of this means to all of us as we came into this program and what we were trying to do, and Bo made it very clear that we’re here to win championships and we’re here to compete for championships day in and day out,” said Sarkisian after a 26-16 win in Ames over the Cyclones two years after the rant by Davis.

“The fact that people remember that I think is a good thing.”

The crux of the rant by Davis — an expletive-filled invitation to enter the NCAA transfer portal. After that, thirty-six players on that roster ultimately took his advice as Sarkisian implemented a new standard for the program.

“One thing we’ve done here that I think has helped. The moment you go into the transfer portal here at the University of Texas, you’re no longer coming back,” Sarkisian said on The Pivot Podcast in April. “In the end, at some point there has to be something that we can hold onto to say, “‘Hey man, this is a special place.’”

The next offseason, Sarkisian implemented Culture Wednesdays, team-building exercises to help the players unite and become more than just teammates, but family.

“I think my favorite Culture Wednesday was one of the first ones we did,” star quarterback Quinn Ewers said in November. “We got separated into groups the size of 15 to 20 players each. And then we kind of just went in a row and told our life stories, what we’ve been through, who means a lot in our lives, and that whole deal was cool to see where people come from, what they’ve been through to get to where they are now.”

Discipline. Accountability. Mental and physical toughness. Vulnerability. Transparency. Those are the core features that helped build culture in Sarkisian’s program, and are readily visible in the change in attitude and development of the Texas team. Look no further than the yearlong maturation of Ewers, who changed his diet to lose weight, worked harder to understand the offense, became a more vocal leader and even cut off his signature mullet.

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“Who you are some of the time is who you are all of the time. If you want to be a disciplined football team when you take the field, you have to be disciplined when you’re off the field. How are we in school, how are we in community service? All of it all adds up to, that becomes your culture, because that is who you are, that is how we go about everyday life,” said Sarkisian.

“Those sound like little things. But I really celebrate that stuff, because those actions and that behavior lead to the big victories. I think it leads to those guys counting on one another, relying on one another because they are doing the right things on a daily basis.”

The culture built by Sarkisian allowed players to break down their personal barriers and learn how to trust each other, a critical facet to pulling out close games. In 2022, the Longhorns lost five games by a one-score margin, but this year Texas is in the College Football Playoff because it was able to win in Tuscaloosa against Alabama and hold onto leads against Houston, Kansas State, and TCU because of its culture.

In the road win over the Cougars, the Longhorns needed a fourth-down stop in their own territory, the type of game senior defensive tackle T’Vondre Sweat and senior linebacker Jaylan Ford agreed Texas would have lost in previous years.

A four-play, goal-line stand in overtime at home against the Wildcats defined the season for Sarkisian.

“That took some real resolve, that took four plays in a row of different players making plays. It wasn’t about one player, it wasn’t about one just phenomenal play. It was about execution. It was about a variety of players doing their jobs really well. It was about supporting one another and picking each other up,” said Sarkisian earlier this month.

If one single play illustrated the culture of this Texas team, it came against TCU in a 26-23 win in Fort Worth in November, when a forced fumble recovery after an interception was the play of the game.

Stacking culture wins on top of each other defines championship teams.

For years, Texas was known for squandering five-star talent — as former Iowa State running back Breece Hall put it bluntly after a win over the Longhorns in 2020, “five-star culture beats five-star talent.” Now Sarkisian has molded those two elements together over the two years since his defensive line coach’s rant.

“Well, now we have both, and that’s a pretty cool thing to be able to say.”

Development

For a program that never lacks for talent, the inability of previous coaching staffs to develop that talent served as stark examples of their failures. In 2018 and 2019, Herman signed back-to-back recruiting classes ranked No. 3 nationally, but proved unable to eclipse eight wins in 2019 and 2020, finishing each year in San Antonio at the Alamo Bowl and getting fired as a result.

In sharp contrast, the coaches hired by Sarkisian took players from Herman’s less-regarded 2020 and 2021 recruiting classes and turned them into championship-caliber performers.

“Ultimately, we can all talk about what we’re going to be, and when I got hired, I said we’d be the best developmental staff in the country and I was very purposeful in the coaches that I did hire in the development of the players that they’ve had historically, and then their success with a life after college in the NFL,” said Sarkisian on Early Signing Day.

After not having a single player drafted in 2022, Texas had two running backs, two defensive linemen, and a linebacker selected in the 2023 NFL Draft, the start of what Sarkisian believes is a cycle of success.

“As those players develop in the program, team success should start to follow as everybody starts to develop, and naturally 5-7, 8-5, and now 12-1 in the College Football Playoff, our players are developing,” said Sarkisian.

Standout tight Texas Ja’Tavion Sanders was ranked as the No. 1 athlete in the 2021 recruiting class, but came to the Forty Acres without a clear positional projection after playing wide receiver and defensive end in high school. After playing mostly on special teams as a freshman, Sanders has caught 93 passes for 1,220 yards and seven touchdowns over the last two seasons and is widely projected as the No. 2 tight end in the 2024 NFL Draft if he declares.

Ewers was the No. 1 prospect in the 2021 class, signing with Ohio State a year early and then transferring to Texas. As a redshirt freshman in 2022, he was plagued with inconsistency. One week he was dismantling Oklahoma 49–0 in the Red River Rivalry, but by the end of the season, Ewers had the ball taken out of his hands in the fourth quarter of a close win over a 6–5 Baylor team. Now Ewers is setting Big 12 Championship records by throwing for 452 yards and four touchdowns in a conference title game and leading his team to the College football Playoff in his second year as a starter. That’s development.

But where the current roster truly shines is in proving how Sarkisian’s staff can turn overlooked recruits into stars.

Running back Jonathon Brooks, a frontrunner for the Doak Walker Award until his season-ending injury in November, came into the program with Texas Tech as his only one other Power Five offer. After Brooks sat behind Bijan Robinson and Roschon Johnson for two seasons, a major offseason storyline surrounded the Texas backfield and how it would look without its two stars leaving for the NFL.

Before his unfortunate ACL tear against TCU in Week 10, Brooks had 1,139 rushing yards and 10 touchdowns even though he didn’t move into the starting role until the third game. And despite missing the final two games of the regular season and the Big 12 Championship game, Brooks currently stands as the 22nd leading rusher in college football.

The development on the Texas defense has been shown too.

Every starter on the defensive line — T’Vondre Sweat, Byron Murphy, Ethan Burke, and Barryn Sorrell — were three-star or low four-star recruits with Murphy’s ranking tying him with five other prospects as the lowest-ranked four-star recruits in the 2021 class.

Sweat, a three-star recruit out of Huntsville, just won the 2023 Outland Trophy, given to the nation’s best interior lineman. Murphy won Big 12 Defensive Lineman of the Year. Together, the two interior stalwarts for the Longhorns are the two highest-graded interior defensive linemen in the country, according to Pro Football Focus.

Linebacker Jaylan Ford was a three-star prospect and the lowest-ranked member of the 2021 class who flipped from Utah during the early signing period before maturing into an All-American.

“I would say we’re living proof that what Sark is doing is developing players, what these coaches are doing is developing players. Just to see guys like us with three stars and look at us now, all of us are balling,” said Ford.

Recruiting

During Sarkisian’s job interview with Eltife, Hartzell, and Del Conte, he laid out his plan to build the Texas program from the trenches out with a focus on recruiting linemen while reducing the number of skill position players on a roster that became unbalanced under former head coach Tom Herman. Unable to field two offensive lines, Sarkisian’s first Orange-White game featured an altered format to get the most out of the spring-ending scrimmage because the roster had as many wide receivers as offensive linemen.

In the 2022 recruiting class 15 of the 28 signees were offensive or defensive linemen, including starting left tackle Kelvin Banks and starting right guard DJ Campbell, the highest-ranked player in the class. Now the Texas roster has half as many wide receivers as when Sarkisian arrived and 40 percent of the scholarship roster devoted to the lines on both sides of the ball.

Sarkisian also needed to land impact players. Of the 14 wide receivers on his 2021 spring roster, 11 ended up transferring. The Longhorns secured a former Michigan signee Xavier Worthy, who now ranks among the best wide receivers in school history, after recording 195 catches for 2,710 yards and 26 touchdowns over three seasons.

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Texas Longhorns wide receiver Xavier Worthy (1) runs with the ball.

And despite a preference to build through high school recruiting, Sarkisian has added important pieces through the transfer portal, including Ewers, Georgia transfer wide receiver AD Mitchell, Ohio State transfer cornerback Ryan Watts, and Stanford transfer punter Ryan Sanborn.

Key members of the 2023 recruiting class, which ranked No. 3 nationally, have already emerged as contributors, like running back Cedric Baxter, linebacker Anthony Hill Jr., the Big 12 Defensive Freshman of the Year, cornerback Malik Muhammad, who hasn’t allowed a touchdown in 272 coverage snaps.

If Sarkisian and the Longhorns can continue to recruit and develop at a high level, this year’s College Football Playoff run won’t be an anomaly.

Implementation

Averaging 36.2 points per game, Texas’ offense has risen to the occasion, increasing its output to 38 points per game against ranked opponents thanks to Sarkisian’s creativity and ability to use personnel, movement and formation to attack coverages and produce big plays.

An example this was when Sarkisian schemed up a 44-yard touchdown pass to Xavier Worthy in the first quarter and a 39-yard touchdown pass to Adonai Mitchell to give the Longhorns a commanding 10-point lead midway through the fourth quarter vs. Alabama.

At the base of Sarkisian’s offense is the mindset encapsulated into his “All Gas, No Brakes” mantra.

“It is an attacking style of offensive play, but a physical brand of football. We believe in running the football and that in turn creates things in the passing game. I’ve been fortunate enough that I’ve had a 1,000-yard rusher every year I’ve called plays in college football, so there’s definite belief in running the football. But the balanced attack I think is what makes us go,” Sarkisian said of his offense during his introductory press conference at Texas.

Culture leads to trust, trust leads to development, development lands more talent, which ultimately culminates in winning football games, and one hopes that the cycle repeats. Some could say Texas and Sarkisian are ahead of schedule, but Sarkisian would disagree. Remember his prediction in his introductory press conference?

“As they see our brand of football, see the type of team that we have, the close-knit camaraderie that our team is going to have, the way our team works, and then what we put on the field, I promise you people are going to want to be a part of this program. We’ve got tremendous facilities. We’ve got great support from our fan base. At the end of the day, this is the University of Texas, and people are going to want to be part of it.”

And so they have. The No. 3 recruiting class in the nation, a 12–1 record, a Big 12 championship, and a berth in the College Football Playoff for a shot at a national championship in the third year. And to top it all off, they landed a Manning.

This is what Chris Del Conte hoped for when they brought Sarkisian in, it’s the expectation at the University of Texas.

“The journey has been difficult at times and it hasn’t been all celebrations and cheers and there’s been some tough, tough moments,” Sarkisian said after Texas earned its berth in the playoffs. “So to see those guys be able to have that emotion yesterday on the field after the game and that emotion right there that they’re competing for a national championship, that’s why they came to University of Texas, right? That’s in your mind when you go to college and say alright, I’m gonna go to Texas. I’m going to be competing for a national championship. Well, now that’s a reality.”

Sarkisian is brewing something special in Austin. Only time will tell if they can continue to do those little things right with the next batch of talented players to step foot on the Forty Acres.

Before leaving for New Orleans, the message from Sarkisian about unfinished business echoed through the hallways of the Texas football facility from coaches to players, from players to players, and from players to the media.

“We didn’t come this far just to come this far.”