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Posted
5 minutes ago, Honeysucklerose said:

Congrats to the Sarks. I suppose the divorce stuff was rectified??

Well, it wouldn't be the first time that having a baby saves a marriage.

Posted
3 hours ago, Laxtonto said:

Baby Sark doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo. Baby Sark, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo. Baby Sark!

 

We need a laughing/fuck you combination emoji for "that's funny, but now that song is stuck in my head."

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Posted
4 hours ago, Navin R. Johnson said:

This baby better not distract Sark during a title run 

I mean, this was everyone's first thought but you're the first one to actually say it out loud.

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Posted

Man, nothing I wrote comes across well and I took 2 cracks at it. I hope it all works out. Being 51 and raising a kid is tough for anyone let alone being a head football coach at Texas. Hopefully they have the support they need from CDC and the administration. I'm sure they do. 

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Posted
1 hour ago, UTGrad98 said:

Man, nothing I wrote comes across well and I took 2 cracks at it. I hope it all works out. Being 51 and raising a kid is tough for anyone let alone being a head football coach at Texas. Hopefully they have the support they need from CDC and the administration. I'm sure they do. 

That is a reasonable concern, and I think you phrased it respectfully enough. 

That being said, this is like his 4th kid. They get easier as you go, especially when the older kids aren’t toddlers anymore. Plus having millions and millions of dollars makes everything easier. 

Posted
4 hours ago, UTGrad98 said:

Man, nothing I wrote comes across well and I took 2 cracks at it. I hope it all works out. Being 51 and raising a kid is tough for anyone let alone being a head football coach at Texas. Hopefully they have the support they need from CDC and the administration. I'm sure they do. 

Sark can afford a full-time nanny(s). It's the wife who could derail his sleep, focus, and mindset.

Fingers crossed

Posted
22 hours ago, gofuckyourself said:

We need a laughing/fuck you combination emoji for "that's funny, but now that song is stuck in my head."

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Posted
42 minutes ago, Magus Ossis said:

Live-in nanny is a major mistake unless old and ugly. It won't matter whether he even experiences attraction if she thinks the nanny is potentially a rival.

He needs a live-in substitute daddy, not a nanny.

Posted
54 minutes ago, Magus Ossis said:

Live-in nanny is a major mistake unless old and ugly. It won't matter whether he even experiences attraction if she thinks the nanny is potentially a rival.

Ok Tiger.

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  • 3 weeks later...
Posted

In the midst of all the NFL draft hoopla, some talking head mentioned that Sark has a history of problems with scoring in the Red Zone. Having not followed his pre-Texas career much, I don't know if that's accurate, but the last couple of seasons ended with Red Zone failures.

So... offseason fully engaged, how does he fix things?

 

 

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Posted
10 minutes ago, Tex Long said:

In the midst of all the NFL draft hoopla, some talking head mentioned that Sark has a history of problems with scoring in the Red Zone. Having not followed his pre-Texas career much, I don't know if that's accurate, but the last couple of seasons ended with Red Zone failures.

So... offseason fully engaged, how does he fix things?

 

 

Easy.  Call the Touchdown Play.

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Posted
28 minutes ago, Tex Long said:

In the midst of all the NFL draft hoopla, some talking head mentioned that Sark has a history of problems with scoring in the Red Zone. Having not followed his pre-Texas career much, I don't know if that's accurate, but the last couple of seasons ended with Red Zone failures.

So... offseason fully engaged, how does he fix things?

I'm not going back to look at USC or UW, but at Texas, here are the redzone scoring numbers:

             TD Scored          FG Scored    Combined Scoring    National Rank

2021     35 (74.5%)          9 (19.2%)       44/47 (93.6%)           6/130

2022    36 (62%)             16 (27.6%)      52/58 (89.7%)           13/131

2023    31 (50.8%)           18 (29.5%)      49/61 (80.3%)           89/133

2024    44 (63.8%)          11 (15.95%)     55/69 (79.7%)           111/134

There's a lot more noise than signal here. 

Scoring in the red zone has really only been an issue for Texas in the last two seasons, which are ironically must better than Sark's first two seasons. So it seems like red zone scoring percentage is a poor proxy for overall program performance. It's also important that our scoring opportunities (i.e., trips to the red zone) have gone up every year, while the number of times we score has been "inconsistent" (although if I were charting this, the trend line would up). By inconsistent I mean lingering within a certain range, but jumping around erratically within that range. The ration of TDs to FGs has also been inconsistent. 

If we were only looking at national ranking, then we have consistently been getting worse, with a huge drop off from 2022 to 2023, and a significant drop off from 2023 to 2024. So there is a numbers based argument that scoring in the red zone is becoming an issue for Sark, especially in the last two years, but I think that isn't the full story or even really a meaningful way of looking at the numbers. In terms of raw numbers, we scored more TDs and settled for fewer FGs in 2024 than in any other year. in contrast, 2023 was our worst season for TDs and settling for FGs, while the scoring percentage was not significantly different. 

Maybe Sark is just going for it more, consequences be damned? Maybe he had less confidence in Ewers and Auburn, and tried to run it more from the red area? Again - I think there' s more noise than signal to this metric, and it seems more like something that pundits like talking about. The numbers just don't seem correlated, and I don't think it matters that much if your red zone scoring percentage isn't impacting your program performance. 

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Posted (edited)
24 minutes ago, Tex Long said:

The ranking going from 6th to 111th doesn't seem noisy.

Would you rather be Team A or Team B:

  • Team A made 20 red zone trips all season and scored on 19 of those trips - scoring percentage is 95%, good enough for second place in all of CFB in 2024. 
  • Team B made 100 red zone trips all season and scored on 80 of those trips - scoring percentage is 80%, sitting at 97th place in 2024.

I hope your answer is Team B, because that's a team that probably made the CFP unless their defense was historically bad. Meanwhile, Team A finished third in the MAC. To me, "signal" means metrics that are related to a team's success, while "noise" are numbers that have an attention getting quality but don't actually mean anything. Red zone scoring presented as a percentage and rank feels a lot more like noise. 

 

Edit - actually, we don't even have to do a hypothetical. Would you rather be 2021 Texas or 2024 Texas?

Edited by Park Gothic
Posted
1 hour ago, Park Gothic said:

Would you rather be Team A or Team B:

 

None of the above.

I want to be 2025-26 Texas and I want to score touchdowns in the Red Zone at a better rate. 

Posted
On 4/22/2025 at 8:01 PM, SimkinsMan said:

My man is cooking in the portal. 

               The Office Thats GIF

  

On 4/6/2025 at 2:18 PM, Armybrat said:
On 4/6/2025 at 1:24 PM, Magus Ossis said:

Live-in nanny is a major mistake unless old and ugly. It won't matter whether he even experiences attraction if she thinks the nanny is potentially a rival.

Ok Tiger.

 

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  • 2 weeks later...
Posted

Steve Sarkisian: "I think that's one of the issues organizations have..."

By Zach Barnett         May 7, 2025 

Culture is the ultimate buzzword in football, and alignment might be right behind it. You're never hear a head coach say, "It's irrelevant to me that the university president, the head football coach, and the third-string janitor are on the same page in regards to helping this program achieve its goals." But while you regularly hear head coaches pay lip service to how important culture and alignment are, you don't often hear them explain how each particular flavor of sausage is made.

In a recent interview with Josh Pate, Steve Sarkisian explained his recipe.

Culture and alignment at Texas start in the first preseason meeting. Before Sark holds his big, first-day-of-school tone-setting meeting with the players, he holds the exact same meeting with the entire staff. He does this for two reasons.

"I'm talking everybody in the recruiting department, everybody in academics, anybody that's touching our players. I want everybody speaking the same language. And then I ask, 'What'd you think of this slide? What'd you think of the way I said this?' And I'll go around with the guys that will give me honest feedback and I'll tweak some things, then I'll go present it to the the team."

The first benefit is a dress rehearsal for himself. The second benefit is more subtle.

"I think it's important the staff's going to hear it twice, because I want our players, anybody that's touching them, to be speaking the same language. I think that's one of the issues a lot of organizations have. The person at the top has an idea, a philosophy and a goal. But if those goals aren't resonating with everybody in the building, if they're not reciprocated in the various departments within the organization, somewhere that's going to break down and at some point the players are going to start hearing conflicting messaging."

That, too, has a tangential benefit: if every staff member is on the same page, it gives players nowhere to hide in terms of meeting the head coach's expectations.

"That's all we as humans want, because it gives us an excuse. When it remains consistent, I think that that's healthy. Time and time again, they're getting a consistent message -- whether that's broad based for the year or the weekly message from game to game. I think that's really important." 

Getting all the gears of the machine turning in sync pays benefits at the end of the season, when it's time for Sarkisian to hold heart-to-hearts with players on where they fit in the coaching staff's plans.

"We have a really simple form that gets filled out by our academic department on every player. Our strength and conditioning coach Torre Becton's going to fill out how he's doing in the weight room. Here's his position coach -- his strengths, weaknesses, things to work on. Here's the training room, how he's taking care of his body. Here's Coach Sark's comments about any issues that he may have had off the field. That's a snapshot of where you're at. I sit down with these players and say, 'Here's where you're at, here's where you can improve.' Even a guy who's, he's straight As, he's all-conference, how are we going to get better, how are we going to improve? You can be honest with them and show it to them. Now there's not, 'But this, but that.' No, no, no. This is exactly where you stand."

The other culture-reinforcer, so to speak, is Texas's own success on the field and in the draft. Twenty-eight Longhorns have been taken in the last three drafts, and 23 in the last two, the most in college football. The coaches don't have to convince players that submitting to the culture will get them drafted, the players see it for themselves. "The fact that (players) can look to their peers, who they've watched develop, and say, 'This is kind of the blueprint. I may not be where I'm supposed to be right now, but if I keep working, keep doing things the right way, that can become a reality for me down the road.'"

The third factor that Sarkisian did not mention in the Pate interview but that he's said before: There is no soft-launching into the portal at Texas. Once you're in it, you're no longer welcomed back to the locker room. 

The first thing most people mention about Sarkisian is his ability as a play-caller, particularly early in games. And that's definitely part of the reason he's silenced the doubters in his four seasons in Austin. Despite ranking 34th in yards per play last season, Texas lead the nation with 108 plays of 20-plus yards, the most by any FBS team since 2019 LSU (albeit in 16 games). 

Play-calling got Sarkisian the job, but his growth as a team builder has allowed him to thrive. 

Steve Sarkisian Joins Josh Pate - Pate State Speaker Series

3 days ago   Pate State Speaker Series

 

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  • 2 weeks later...
Posted

SIAP... Old article with updates on 2025 Coaching Staff

Steve Sarkisian rounds out staff with four new assistant coaches, while promoting a pair of staff members to assistant coaching roles.

03.06.2025

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Quote

AUSTIN, Texas – Texas Football recently completed several assistant coaching staff updates, head coach Steve Sarkisian announced Thursday. The group includes three assistant coaches replacing staff members that departed for other positions and three newly created assistant coaching roles, two of which were promoted from within his staff. 

Most recently, former longtime Longhorn Football staffer Duane Akina returned to the Forty Acres as defensive passing game coordinator and safeties coach. Prior to that, Sarkisian brought Chad Scott on board to coach running backs, and Mark Orphey as cornerbacks coach. That group replaces Terry Joseph (New Orleans Saints) and Tashard Choice (Detroit Lions), who left for coaching positions in the NFL, and Blake Gideon, now the defensive coordinator at Georgia Tech. 

Additionally, staff members Michael Bimonte (co-passing game coordinator/assistant quarterback coach) and Keynodo Hudson (nickels) were promoted to newly created assistant coaching positions, while LaAllan Clark came onboard in a new assistant coaching role overseeing the defensive edge players. Bimonte spent the past four seasons as an offensive analyst for the Longhorns, and Hudson joined the staff as a defensive analyst last season.

Duane Akina - Defensive Passing Game Coordinator/Safeties
Duane Akina spent 13 seasons coaching defensive backs at Texas from 2001-2013. With the Longhorns, Akina brought the program its first winners of the Thorpe Award – honoring the nation's top defensive back – in back-to-back honorees Michael Huff in 2005 and Aaron Ross in 2006, to go along with two finalists in Earl Thomas (2009) and Quentin Jammer (2001) and 14 first-team All-Big 12 picks. He was also co-defensive coordinator and defensive backs coach on the staff that guided the Longhorns to the program's fourth National Championship in 2005. Texas went 131-36, won at least 10 games nine times (11+ six times), finished in the top-5 five times and top-10 on seven occasions during his tenure with the Longhorns. Thirteen of his defensive backs at Texas were selected in the NFL Draft with six going in the first-round. Akina spent the last two seasons at the University of Arizona where he coached the secondary in 2023 and was defensive coordinator in 2024. That was his second stint with the Wildcats, as well, having previously coached there 14 seasons from 1987-2000. In between his time at Texas and his second tenure at Arizona, Akina was the defensive backs coach at Stanford for nine seasons from 2014-22. In all, Akina has over 46 years of coaching experience in college and professional football that includes early stints as a graduate assistant at Washington, five years at Hawai'i and one season with the Calgary Stampeders. In all, Akina has coached three Thorpe Award winners, six Thorpe finalists and 41 defensive backs who have played in the NFL, including seven Pro Bowlers, nine Super Bowl participants and 12 All-Americans. Akina has coached in 26 bowl games. A native of Honolulu, Akina is a 1979 graduate of the University of Washington where he earned three letters as a quarterback. (Full bio)

Mark Orphey – Cornerbacks
A 14-year coaching veteran who has deep roots in the State of Texas where he played high school and college football, Mark Orphey (or-fay) has spent five seasons working in the SEC and has been a part of six bowl games, the FBS Playoffs and a College Football Playoff National Championship Game. Orphey spent the past three seasons coaching cornerbacks at Rutgers, helping revitalize a Scarlet Knights program with back-to-back winning seasons and a bowl game the past two years for the first time since 2011-12. Prior to Rutgers, Orphey spent the 2021 season as a senior defensive analyst working on Nick Saban's staff at Alabama and helping develop the defensive game plan while assisting with defensive backs. That Crimson Tide squad won the SEC Championship and advanced to National Championship Game. Orphey spent two seasons as secondary coach at Utah State (2019-20), two seasons at Montana State (2017-18) working under former Longhorn co-defensive coordinator Jeff Choate, and four seasons in the SEC working at South Carolina, serving as a quality control assistant (2013) and defensive graduate assistant (2014-16). Orphey began his collegiate coaching career at his alma mater as the cornerbacks coach at Texas Southern for two seasons (2011-12). Born and raised in Houston, Orphey is a 2007 graduate of Galena Park North Shore High School where he was an all-district standout in both football and track and field. A 2010 graduate of Texas Southern, he was a three-year starter at cornerback for the Tigers, earning All-Southwestern Athletic Conference honors as a junior and senior. (Full bio)

Chad Scott – Running Backs
Chad Scott, a 20-year collegiate coaching veteran, joins the Longhorns' staff with five years of experience as an offensive coordinator in addition to three more as a run game coordinator. Scott comes to Texas after having spent the last seven seasons at West Virginia overseeing the running backs dating back to 2019. He also served as the offensive coordinator for the 2023-24 seasons, was the co-offensive coordinator from 2019-21 and was the run game coordinator in 2022. West Virginia finished an especially impressive 2023 season with 2,976 rushing yards and an average of 228.9 rushing yards per game, ranking No. 1 among Power Five schools for both. Scott helped guide the Mountaineers to three bowl games with two wins in those in his time there under head coach Neal Brown. Prior to West Virginia, Scott served stints at his alma mater North Carolina (TE/Hybrids/2016-18), Kentucky (RB/2013-14), Texas Tech (RB/2010-12) and Troy (RB/2007-09). The Red Raiders won three bowl games in Scott's three seasons there, and at Troy, he helped lead the Trojans to three consecutive Sun Belt Conference Championships and a pair of appearances in the New Orleans Bowl. A native of Plant City, Florida, Scott began his collegiate playing career at Kentucky before transferring to North Carolina, where he lettered as a running back in 2003 and 2005. He led the Tar Heels in rushing as a senior and ran for a career-high 175 yards and two TDs in UNC's upset of No. 4 Miami in 2004. Scott spent time in the National Football League with the Cleveland Browns and Pittsburgh Steelers before returning to his alma mater in 2006 as a graduate assistant video analyst. (Full bio)

Michael Bimonte – Co-Passing Game Coordinator/Assistant Quarterback Coach
Michael Bimonte enters his fifth season at Texas and first as the Longhorns' assistant quarterbacks coach/co-passing game coordinator after serving as a senior football analyst from 2021-24. Bimonte has helped the UT program earn back-to-back appearances in the College Football Playoff, including 2024 when the Longhorns recorded a school-record-tying 13 wins for just the third time in school history, including a first-round playoff win over Clemson, and a Chick-fil-A Peach Bowl Championship over Arizona State. The 2023 season also resulted in UT's first Big 12 Championship since 2009 and winning 12 games for the first time since that season. In 2022, Texas attained an 8-5 record and Alamo Bowl appearance. Prior to spending time in the technologies industry, Bimonte was quarterbacks coach and offensive quality control coach at Delaware in 2016. A Manalapan, N.J. native, Bimonte played quarterback at Rutgers from 2011-2014, playing four seasons under current Texas co-offensive coordinator and offensive line coach Kyle Flood. (Full bio)

Keynodo Hudson – Nickels
Keynodo Hudson is in his second season on staff at Texas after serving as a defensive analyst in 2024. A veteran of 17 years as a college coach, he helped the Longhorns notch a school-record-tying 13 wins and earn a spot in the College Football Playoff semifinals after a first-round playoff win over Clemson, and a Chick-fil-A Peach Bowl Championship over Arizona State. Prior to his time on the Forty Acres, Hudson spent one season at Ole Miss as the cornerbacks coach in 2023 when the Rebels finished 11-2 overall and 6-2 during SEC play. In 2021-22, he served as Western Kentucky's cornerbacks coach, and prior to that spent two seasons on staff at Illinois as defensive backs coach. Hudson helped lead Illinois to the program's first bowl berth in five years. Before Illinois, Hudson spent 2017-18 as cornerbacks coach at Florida Atlantic. In his first year in Boca Raton in 2017, FAU concluded the season on a 10-game win streak with victories over North Texas in the Conference USA Championship and Akron in the Boca Raton Bowl. Prior to FAU, Hudson spent six seasons from 2012-2016 as a defensive administrative assistant at USC. After starting his career as secondary coach at the University of Charleston in 2004-08, he was defensive coordinator at Mainland High School in Daytona Beach, Fla. (2009-11). A Tampa native, he played college football at Reedley College from 1997-00 before transferring to West Virginia Tech where he played his final season and graduated in 2004. (Full bio)

LaAllan Clark – Edge
LaAllan Clark comes to Texas after spending two years as a defensive line graduate assistant for Ohio State from 2023-24. Clark helped the 2024 Ohio State defense rank first nationally in scoring defense, total defense, yards allowed per play, touchdowns allowed per play and opponents touchdowns scored in the red zone as the Buckeyes won the National Championship. In 2023, Clark helped mentor and develop an Ohio State defensive line that played an integral role in the Buckeyes in ranking first in the FBS in pass defense, third in total defense and 18th against the run. He spent the 2022 season as the defensive ends coach at Southern University. Clark began his coaching career in 2019 at Prairie View A&M as a graduate assistant. In addition to his college coaching experience, Clark has trained current NFL pass rushers such as former Longhorns Malcolm Roach, Joseph Ossai, Charles Omenihu, and Moro Ojomo. A native of Baton Rouge, La., Clark lettered two seasons (2014-2015) at Northwestern State before transferring Grambling State University, where he was a two-year letterwinner (2017-2018) as a defensive end for the Tigers and graduated in 2018.

 

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Posted

https://www.espn.com/college-football/story/_/id/45254253/ranking-college-football-coaches-players

Coaches ranked as players. Sark comes in at #4 with Heupel, Eddie George, and Sanders ahead of him.

Quote

4. Steve Sarkisian, Texas Longhorns: As an undersized high school quarterback, Sarkisian wasn't recruited heavily and started his college career as a USC baseball player. He then went to El Camino College, where he resumed football. Sarkisian became a junior college All-American in 1994 and set a juco record for completion percentage (74.2), while also playing baseball. His next stop was BYU, where he had great success as a two-year starter, earning All-WAC honors as a junior and being named WAC Offensive Player of the Year and a second-team All-American as a senior. That fall, he won the Sammy Baugh Trophy as the nation's top quarterback, led the nation in passer rating and finished with 4,027 passing yards and 33 touchdowns. Sarkisian helped BYU (14-1) to a No. 5 finish. He then played three seasons in the CFL, starting in 1999 for Saskatchewan.

 

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Posted
On 4/30/2025 at 9:44 AM, Tex Long said:

The ranking going from 6th to 111th doesn't seem noisy.

Some noise

Some fallout of a clearly injured Ewers for big chunks of 2023/24, losing Bijan after 2022, Auburn sucking it up all over the place and no Baxter in 2024? 

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Posted
37 minutes ago, Js1 said:

Some noise

Some fallout of a clearly injured Ewers for big chunks of 2023/24, losing Bijan after 2022, Auburn sucking it up all over the place and no Baxter in 2024? 

Background music.

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