The Craig Way Show

What could the starters look like for Texas in Week One?

Texas Longhorns head coach Steve Sarkisian spoke with the media Tuesday night and addressed what the starters could like look in Week One and if he's still figuring it out. Plus, Sark was asked about what preferred walk-ons have stood out and his confidence level in the front four.

Duration:: 9m
Broadcast on:: 13 Aug 2024
Audio Format:: mp3

back to the Craig Way show connect with Craig through the text line by texting zone 81530 followed by your message. Standard message and data rates may apply. In this hour, we began with Olympics, but now we move on to some football and back to law and football, which has an evening practice tonight. And they come off a very productive Monday workout. And so here they are in the dog days of these triple digit temperatures practice. And now tonight, it'll cool off. It'll be in the 90s practicing tonight. It might even be in the low 90s when they're practicing tonight. It might even be in the upper 80s by the time they get done. But long ones had Coach Steve Sarkeesian continues to be impressed with the approach that his guys have taken to these workouts and even coming off of the scrimmage. So since they're all working very hard, one of the questions for Sark at his media availability yesterday was does he already have his starters figured out of top 22, if you will, you know, 22 players on offense, 22 David, does he already have his starters figured out on all of that? Well, you know, I think I think the one thing for us is that we really need a top 44, you know, just the way the season is going to go. The length of the season, the extension kind of a four non-conference games before we get to conference play. You know, we're really looking at 2D rather than just the 1D. And we're really trying to look at those group of guys on both sides of the ball as they're all starters. And then there's guys that are going to have unique packages within that, whether it's third down on defense or specific packages offensively. And so I would say that I would probably be minimizing it too much just to say 22 when in reality, we're really looking for 44. Yeah, the 44 means too deep on both offense and too deep on defense. Now, that takes on some added meaning when there is attrition at position. And we've all seen what's happened of late with the running back spot with, you know, CJ Baxter gone for the year with the knee injury. We did learn that Christian Clark did suffer a lower leg injury, the extent of which has not been released and revealed yet. We may find that out over time, but it still is bringing up holes. That's one in the running back spot. There's holes in the other thing. And, you know, quite often, even with 85 scholarship athletes. Walk-ons have a big role with any successful college football program, no matter the level. I mean, from junior college, all the way up to power five or power four now, I guess, since the pack 12 is down to the Tupac. So, you know, it's important to have those preferred walk-ons, PWOs as they're known, because what's meant by preferred walk-ons is getting the reference to SARC from, say, high school coaches and other folks as well, who would know about a young man? So, SARC was asked, are there some PWOs and preferred walk-ons who have stood out so far? Yeah, I think two guys that have stood out to me have been, you know, Marshall Landware, you know, linebacker on defense, but what he's been doing on special teams, he's definitely showing them showing up. And college paint, Colin Page has done a nice job. You know, he's been impactful on special teams and ran the ball well Saturday as well. So those two guys definitely have stood out to me. All right. So, Landware, it's nice to know they're also because of, you know, the nature of that position, linebacker, and Maurice Blackwell got banged up. So it's nice to have other guys who can step in and do things. And then for Colin Page, running back, Cameron, you saw Colin Page, I saw Colin Page. We saw him play for Anderson. He did a heck of a job at running back for Anderson. Now Anderson is Anderson. It's high school. In fact, Anderson even dropped a 5A this year, but he did a good job there. And that's a good program, run with some tough guys. I mean, it seems like Ed Small's been there eight years, you know, seriously. I did Ed Small's first ever high school football game, working with, well, worked at with Roger Wallace, Taka Shack, Bull Telecast, and that was three years ago. So, and he was starting as a freshman and did a heck of a job. And we know at one time he was committed to Texas for baseball. Now he's committed to TC for football. But that program is turned out some guys that work very hard. And Colin Page is one of those guys who has worked very hard. And they might need him to help out a little bit with the depth that is really being tested at that running back spot, depending on how long Christian Clark could be out. Jared Gibson has done a good job, but he is a freshman. And then of course, you, you know, CJ Baxter was probably the starter, although Jayden Blue expected to get a ton of time, Baxter now out. So Blue is really the number one guy and Trey Weisner is the number two guy. But you're talking about three scholarship guys at running back. So Colin Page may be able to add a little bit of depth there. And, you know, there's other reports of Ryan Niblet. They may take a look at moving him from receiver back to running back as well. Now, on the defensive side, coaches love to say that they love to get pressure from four. And what they mean by that is the down lineman that college football coaches, pro football coaches, high school football coaches, whatever you're talking about, whatever level, would prefer two blitz by design, not by necessity. And it's a fine line sometimes, whether you have to send blitzers more than you probably would want to. So in the case of Pete Wieckowski, the defensive coordinator, you know, how is he feeling about it? And for that matter, to the head coach, how to start feel about his front four. Can they get enough pressure on the quarterback? Or they going to have to do more blitzing than they might otherwise have planned on doing. Well, I want to do both. You know, I think one of the challenges is, you know, we want to be a really versatile defense, you know, just like we're trying to be a really versatile offense. And, you know, we don't want to just be stationary targets and we want to have the ability to make some things up. You know, I would say, you know, Vernon and Alfred are playing at a really high level. And they have a different skill set, let's say, than Murph and Sweat had last year, you know, their movement skills, their length, their different players. But, you know, Anthony's disruptive. We saw that last year when we added him into the mix and what he could do even coming off the edge. And so I think we're maybe a little bit more versatile this year that way, you know, obviously with the addition of Trey and the versatility of Ambassador Sorrell and Ethan Burke, you know, Justice Finkley's had a good camp and Colin Simmons, as we know, you know, can get after the quarterback. So we're a little, you know, we're maybe a little bit different. And because we're a little bit different, we have to adapt and evolve as a staff as well. It's interesting. In case you're not completely up to speed on some of those guys that he was merely mentioning by first name when he says Vernon and Alfred, obviously, he's talking about Alfred Collins and Vernon Broughton. And what they've done when he said, you know, he mentioned Justice Finkley. He mentioned Anthony, that being Anthony Hill, who is moving inside at his linebacker spot. And today, by the way, his name was named to the Butkus Award Watchlist. He brought up, we said, Trey was talking about Trey Moore, the transfer from UTSA, that they're like, were there. And he even mentioned Colin Simmons. And I haven't heard Stark talk that much about Colin Simmons since he signed. If you watch Colin Simmons playing high school at Dunkinville, he was a wrecking crew. He was, apologies to A&M, Daggie fans about the wrecking crew coming in there. He was, he was, he could wreak a lot of havoc. He was, he was something else. And Alex Januaries, another guy from Dunkinville, who's making progress strides. He mentioned Ethan Burke, and Baron Sorrell, obviously a defensive end. So he was, he was mentioning the entire group of it, the ensemble cast. And that's just the point that it's probably going to take all of those guys being able to make plays in order, in order for Stark to have Pete Quikowski send blitzers by design rather than just necessity to be able to blitz when the situation really can capitalize on it. And when the opponent might not necessarily otherwise be expecting it, because that's when your blitzers get home more and you have more success with those. All right, we'll hear more from Stark coming up next hour. We get some pro football notes to get to next when we continue on Sports Radio, I am 13 under the zone in the IR radio app.