After the Texas Longhorns emerged on Saturday as possibly the least impressive of the three-program love triangle that involves Texas/Oklahoma/Texas A&M at the midway point in September, it’s the totality of Steve Sarkisian’s problems that has my full attention.
There’s no question about the fact that the Texas Longhorns have an Arch Manning problem, which has truly muddied the waters of everything that Sarkisian and his coaches are dealing with on the offensive side of the ball.
Everyone who wasn’t consumed with an overdose amount of burnt orange confirmation bias could see that the Longhorns were worse off at every single position on the offense. Hopeful expectations existed that Manning’s quality would lift the tides of all these other boats that weren’t as good as last year’s boats.
Manning’s current quality isn’t making his team better and I really don’t know how to wrap my head around the fact that his best play in year three under quarterback guru Sarkisian is a freaking quarterback keeper.
We’re into year five of the Sarkisian era and we’re still waiting for a plus-quarterback to emerge. It’s his specialty. Well, a person could contend that A&M OC Collin Klein is doing a better job in 2025 with Marcell Reed than Sarkisian is with Manning.
Let’s park the Manning part of this offensive discussion for a moment. Believe me, there’s plenty of time to get there. The thing that I want to focus on is Sarkisian and what was left for chance throughout all of 2025. That’s true despite the fact that the Longhorns were committed to doing everything possible to replicate the 2024 Ohio State Buckeyes.
Somehow that channeled dedication to take a by any means needed approach to win a national championship this season skipped three critical areas of the offense.
1. Texas Longhorns Football lost serious speed merchants in Matthew Golden (4.29), Isaiah Bond (4.39) and even Silas Bolden (4.38) from last year’s team, which followed on the heels of adding Adonai Mitchell (4.34) just the season before to pair along with the fastest man in the history of the NFL Combine. These last two national seminal runs were done so on the backs of game-changing speed merchants at receiver.
Sarkisian made a very deliberate decision in the last 12-18 months to move away from speedsters at wide receivers in the name of recruiting bigger, stronger receivers that I suppose he believes can cope in the rugged SEC better. Whatever it was, replacing the team speed at wide receiver was almost completely ignored in recruiting and in the Portal. Not a single freshman has made so much as a tiny impact this season.
What on earth was Sark seeing that had him believing that what they had was enough?
Was the only way to secure the commitments of a bunch of super blue chip receivers who can’t get on the field to help you right now (hey, Chris Jackson … maybe coach someone up) to promise them you weren’t going to have someone like Golden, Mitchell or Bond step in front of them? Whatever the reasons, this position is a mess and it’s in a mess for about a half-dozen reasons.
2. The moment Jaydon Blue walked out of the Texas Longhorns Football locker room and into the NFL, the Longhorns were left with a serious lack of burst, explosiveness, and versatility. From my vantage point, there were too many players scheduled to be on the roster who just didn’t give the team the kind of juice needed to get to the third level of a defense.
All that existed was last year’s leading rush Tre Wisner (4.7 YPC), two players returning from major injuries in C.J. Baxter (4.8 YPC in 2023) and Christian Clark (no career carries), another second-year player in Jerrick Gibson (4.8 YPC) and two freshmen that weren’t viewed as impact recruits and were not expected to make major contributions.
To these eyes, what remained screamed that added juice was needed at the position. Someone that might actually scare the hell out of opposing offenses. Hell, I was much more interested in the players that could have transferred in from West Virginia than I was interested in taking that school’s coach.
Sarkisian decided to do nothing, which seems completely bonkers when you consider the number of returning injured players and non-speedsters who remained in the group.
With 25 percent of the season completed, here’s your Texas running backs’ production:
* C.J. Baxter – 24 carries for 110 yards (4.6 YPC), zero touchdowns and a long of 18 yards, 7 receptions for 22 yards and zero touchdowns
* Jerrick Gibson – 25 carries for 101 yards (4.1 YPC), zero touchdowns and a long of 14 yards, no receptions
* Tre Wisner – 16 carries for 80 yards (5.0 YPC), zero touchdowns and a long of 13 yards, 1 catch for 5 yards and zero touchdowns
* James Simon – 17 carries for 67 yards (3.9 YPC), zero touchdowns and a long of 13 yards, 1 reception for 8 yards and zero touchdowns
* Christian Clark – 14 carries for 53 yards (3.8 YPC), zero touchdowns and a long of 13 yards, 2 receptions for 32 yards and zero touchdowns
That group simply was not well constructed and it was much-discussed throughout the off-season. The failure to address the needs through the Portal is on Sark.
3. The offensive line is unacceptable.
It’s quite scary to think that whatever the Longhorns are dealing with on the offensive line front, injuries haven’t been the cause of the crisis. Texas Football has its best five on the field and those five can’t control the line of scrimmage against the likes of San Jose State and UTEP. No one on the current line is really good enough to start on an actual good line outside of Trevor Goosby.
Development has stalled. Recruiting hasn’t been good enough. At best, the depth was very questionable.
Texas Longhorns Football chose to stand pat. Again. There were scholarships to use in that area and the decision was to trust what was available on hand.
All three of these areas of the offense have Sark’s fingerprints and decision-making written all over them. Same with Brandon Harris and anyone else involved in the decision to place priorities from the Portal in other areas … like a fourth quarterback. Or five defensive tackles. Or handing a scholarship out to a walk-on.
These errors are holding back the offense and always threatened to do so without a big bounce of luck and without Manning being so good that he made the rest of these issues look like a bunch of nothing.
Not a single one of the gambles/decisions made with regard to any of these three areas has been rewarded through three games.
That’s before we get to quarterback …
