Texas football head coach Steve Sarkisian is now in his fifth season at UT. And in those five seasons, I don’t think there is a single game week press conference where Sark hasn’t praised the effort he’s seeing on the practice field that week.
Ok, that may be a slight exaggeration. I seem to recall one or two where he said he wasn’t happy with their effort (especially early on in his tenure and during big game weeks like OU). But by and large, he has heaped copious amounts of praise on his players’ efforts on the practice field, including today.
“These guys have really been practicing their asses off,” Sarkisian told reporters Thursday morning ahead of this weekend’s tilt against Sam Houston State. “It’s not just frontline units, it’s all the way down through our scout teams and it’s been a couple of weeks now that they’ve been practicing that way and I’m really proud of them.”
But therein lies the disconnect.
For a couple of weeks now, Arch Manning and this team have been going hard in practice. And for a couple of weeks now, we’ve seen slow starts sap the enthusiasm out of the stadium.
That makes Sark’s goal this week pretty clear cut.
“The goal for me this week is that they take practice to the game and they trust their training and just go cut it loose and play the game of football the way I know they’re capable of playing,” said Sarkisian.
That goal is sometimes easier said than done.
