A half-decade ago, the arrival of Steve Sarkisian in Austin was supposed to signal the beginning of a new era of Longhorns football as an offensive supernova of the sport.
If Tom Herman wasn’t comfortable calling plays as a head coach, by Gawd, the Longhorns were going to find someone who could.
Enter Sarkisian.
His Alabama offense in 2020 wasn’t college football’s version of the Greatest Show on Turf, but with NFL first-round picks at quarterback, running back, wide receiver and a pair of bookend offensive tackles, it was pretty damn close while averaging 48.5 points per game.
That same year, Tom Herman’s offense averaged 42.7 points per game, which ranked seventh nationally one season after ranking 17th in 2019 with 35.2 points per game with Tim Beck calling the plays. If you’re wondering, Sarkisian’s Crimson Tide offense ranked second nationally with 47.2 points per game. Considering his reputation for developing quarterbacks, it was easy to see why the Texas decision-makers believed they were making a move that would allow them to make critical gained slim margins.
Sarkisian’s 2-sided coin
Those decision-makers were right and wrong at the same time. They were right about the hire of Sarkisian elevating the program as a whole. He’s done that and then some with regard to talent acquisition. They just weren’t right about Sarkisian improving the offense. Consider the scoring averages of his first five teams in Austin, almost all of which have featured a former No. 1 overall high school quarterback prospect guiding the offense:
2021: 35.3 (18th nationally)
2022: 34.5 (25th nationally)
2023: 35.8 (15th nationally)
2024: 33.0 (29th nationally)
2025: 30.5 (41st nationally)
I’m sorry. That’s not good enough. It’s not good enough that his best offense in five seasons has averaged fewer than 6.9 points per game than the offense that helped get Tom Herman pushed out of town. It’s not good enough that his best offense is a statistical wash with the one that got Beck fired.
The quarterbacks he’s coached still haven’t cracked anything better than a 158.6 efficiency rating … which is mid. The red zone issues have never been fixed, no matter the amount of time put in to resolve them. It’s just a bunch of small things that, when you add them together, end up producing an offense that has taken steps backwards in the final Ewers season and the first with Arch Manning.
About Arch…
Speaking of Manning, let’s just reconsider for a moment the pressure Sarkisian put on his young quarterback when he didn’t use the Portal to properly replace a roster that was weakened at every position other than quarterback. Through the 2025 off-season, it was said over and over and over again that the Longhorns hoped to mitigate what it meant to be worse at running back, wide receiver, tight end and most of the offensive line by just being better at the quarterback position.
Hope is not a strategy, which made pouring all of the pressure on Manning while doing very little to elevate anything around him a misplaced gamble. That resulted with a season of statistical numbers that truly reminded everyone of what it meant to live with Beck as the program’s offensive mastermind in the early Herman years.
You know what’s not a wish and a prayer?
Adding Cam Coleman. That’s a plan. Adding Raleek Brown and Hollywood Smothers. Another plan. Adding instant starters along the offensive line instead of hoping guys that have never been good players magically become something else. That’s a plan, too. These are the types of plans befitting of having Manning as the starter at quarterback going into what might be his fourth and final season in Austin.
There’s nothing else that needs to be said other than it’s time for Sarkisian to start delivering the goods on the offensive side of the ball.
No excuses. Don’t tell us about the time in labor … we just want to see the baby. There’s a lot of that with this program on that side of the ball right now.
It’s time to be great. If it doesn’t happen, maybe Sarkisian should consider bringing in the last play-caller to produce a top 10 offense in Austin. I hear he’s available.
