I thank God for my wife. She is, without a doubt, the best thing that has ever happened to me.
Of course, she probably wouldn’t be my wife had she not been blatantly obvious with me that she was interested.
I know that is hard for some of you to understand. You see me today as a smooth, debonair man about town, but it hasn’t always been that way.
I always had trouble reading between the lines to know when a girl was interested in me. So any woman I ever dated had to practically club me over the head and fly a banner over my house letting me know she was interested before I would ask her out.
Luckily for me and my career, I never had the same trouble when it came to “coach speak.” I always understand what they’re saying (and not saying) when they stand up before the press and dance around questions.
And, honestly, Texas head coach Steve Sarkisian does a lot less tap dancing than some other coaches I’ve covered in my time. But you still have to read between the lines a little bit to discern what is really happening in those closed practices.
So with that in mind, let’s wade through everything we’ve heard during the first week of camp to see what rings true and what doesn’t.
GET READY FOR A NEW LOOK TEXAS OFFENSE THIS SEASON …
We have all expected the offense to look better with Arch under center than what it has been under Quinn Ewers, but Sark seemed to confirm that on the first day of practices.
“Even against routes on air, there was some good things in there,” Sarkisian said while talking about Manning and transfer quarterback Matthew Caldwell following the first practice. “They weren’t perfect – first day back, but they made some throws today that were encouraging into fitting the style of offense I think that we want to be this fall.”
Did you catch that?
“The style of offense I think that we want to be this fall,” Sarkisian said.
What does that really mean?
Get ready for the deep ball.
We saw glimpses of it last season, but Arch’s deep ball is what Sark has wanted out of the QB position ever since he got to Austin. The deep passes open up so much of the offense from the run game to the underneath routes. It’s hard for safeties to cheat up when they’re worried about Ryan Wingo streaking by them before cradling the ball for an easy touchdown.
That alone should be enough to bolster the run game in a big way.
Sark’s 13-year streak of having a 1,000-yard rusher probably would have come to an end last season had the Horns not made a deep playoff run. They won’t need as deep a run this year to get to the 1,000-yard mark for one of the RBs. Tre Wisner, CJ Baxter, Jerrick Gibson and Christian Clark are all going to see holes open up and one of them will take control.
If Sark is to get another 1,000-yard rusher, then it will only happen with the help of a new-look offensive line.
One of the most interesting nuggets to come out of the coordinator media availability prior to the start of camp was just how much offensive line coach Kyle Flood changes up the blocking schemes each year.
“When we first got here, it was inside zone and then last year it kind of morphed into outside zone,” Flood said. “It was very productive for us over the course of the season. I don’t know what that’s going to look like this year yet.
“As coaches, we’ll figure out what schemes are going to allow us to utilize that personnel in the best way,” Flood said. “It may be outside zone again, but I don’t go into it saying, okay, hey, this is what we’re going to be exclusively, or this is what we’re going to do more than anything else. I think I want to see that training camp to really be sure of what we feel like is the best thing for this football team, and not just assume, because outside zone might have been best last year, that it’s going to be the best again.”
