The Craig Way Show

Steve Sarkisian on Saturday's scrimmage and Quinn Ewers' chemistry with wideouts

Texas Longhorns head coach Steve Sarkisian met with local media last night after Tuesday's practice to discuss Saturday's scrimmage, his biggest takeaways, injury updates and answers questions concerning Quinn Ewers' chemistry with the wideouts and more.

Duration:: 7m
Broadcast on:: 13 Aug 2024
Audio Format:: mp3

[upbeat music] - Welcome back to the Craig Way show and the voice of the Longhorns Craig Way. Follow Craig on social media @cornboys. [upbeat music] - Important as well for us to talk some Longhorn football and that means a hearing from the head coach, Steve Sarkisian. Now yesterday Sark had a media availability after the practice. And again, at the time that the media availability took place, Sark had not yet been told of any of the extent of the injury to Christian Clark. That's why there isn't a specific mention of that sort of thing. But he did have some other things to talk about, starting off with his opening thoughts on the prior few days. - Appreciate y'all being on here on Zoom. I think first of all, and I'll talk about the scrimmage in a minute, but talk a little bit about today. Obviously we had the day off to review the tape with the players, had a good walk through this morning. And I thought today's practice was as good a practice as we've had that I can remember in quite some time. I thought the energy level, the intensity of practice, the mental intensity, the physical intensity, the guys competing at a high level, it was a fun practice as a coach. And both sides did some really good things. There was some plays made. But I thought one thing that showed up today, that definitely showed up Saturday and the scrimmage was the defense's ability to attack the football. And it has been a huge emphasis of ours. And it showed up Saturday. From the very first night we've been talking about getting after the football. It showed up Saturday, it showed up again today, which is a real positive from a defensive perspective. Our ability to create turnovers, we got interceptions last year, we didn't get as many fumbles as we would have liked. That's gotta become a mainstay of our defense. And so for the guys to be attacking the ball, the way that they are is really encouraging. I thought Saturday's scrimmage was highly competitive. Your natural things that happen in a first scrimmage, like a first preseason NFL game, was a little bit of some of the sloppiness, the pre-snapped penalties, whether it was fall starts, whether it was defense jumping off sides. But those things are fixable. And we'll get those fixed. I think when you get into that setting at times, those types of things can happen. I think that we got a pretty good sense in a field of watching these receivers play. And naturally, I think we're starting to get a good sense in a field for the defensive front and what that looks like. But I've been proud of our guys. They've worked hard. We have a bunch of stuff we gotta clean up. That's the beauty of having the time that we have until the first ball game. But what I was impressed with is they were very coachable yesterday and we were demanding. We coached them hard. We wanted to get things fixed. And they responded really well today, like I said, with a lot of intensity and a lot of energy. - All right, so there's some opening thoughts. Then in the Q&A, one of the first things asked of Sark was about the chemistry that his quarterbacks are developing with the wide receivers in specific, obviously, Quinn Ewer's being the number one quarterback. How about the chemistry developing between Quinn and the wide outs? - I thought, you know, when you think about the kind of the three new faces and it's been good. You know, I mean, Isaiah, you know, has been, you know, played really well Saturday. I think that, you know, all three of those guys caught playing a ball Saturday between Isaiah, Matt, and Silas, you know, I think we're learning more about Silas, you know, he just hasn't been here as long. We didn't have him in spring practice. And so, but I do think Quinn's got really good rapport with those guys and naturally, you know, we try to rotate a fair amount of players with our ones and our twos, you know, it's not. And we have that luxury right now. It's not so, it's the ones and then it's the twos. And then, you know, as we were, let's call it a year ago. And then when a two gets in with the ones, maybe there's not that rapport. We've been rotating the wide outs, the tight ends, pretty regularly, almost on a daily basis. And so I think he's gained a lot of rapport with really a good six deep at the receiver position. And really those front line three tight ends, you know, with Gunnar, Amari, and Juan. So I think we feel very comfortable with that. And I think naturally, Quinn's understanding schematically of what we're doing is helpful because he's almost an extension of us on the field and he can talk through things with the players, receiver, you know, based on a coverage, how he would like it to go and where a guy should be and what spot. And that just goes back to Quinn's leadership, right? And his maturation, right? And not the player, but the person. And I think he's a lot more comfortable doing those types of things and it's needed. But I think it's definitely paying off. - You heard Sarn mentioned early on about, in his opening comments about the practice that they had yesterday and the importance of the intensity because it's a normal thing. And I can tell you, having been around this program for some 30 plus years, that it's quite normal. And unfortunately, coaches have come to expect that coming off of a scrimmage, when guys are hyped up and ready to go from a scrimmage perspective, that the first practice after that quite often isn't up to par. It's the guys have a little bit of trouble getting back into it. And so Sarg was asked about the importance of his guys getting back out there, how important it was for them to have a high level practice on Monday following the Saturday scrimmage. - Well, it's huge. This is kind of that week, right? In training camp where you're kind of in the middle of things, we're not in the game plan mode. But, you know, we, you know, like I said, I think the leadership of our guys has been tremendous and I think that's been the trickle down effect to the younger players. And as coaches, we obviously value these practices because for us to be as good as we wanna be, that excellence lies in the details. And it's one thing to know the call. It's another to know the details of the call and why we're calling it and what we're trying to accomplish when we're calling it in all three phases, office, defense and special teams. - All right, so there's some thoughts from Sarg following the Monday practice. We're gonna hear more from Sarg coming up in each of the next two hours as well. But up next, we get to inconceivable here for a Tuesday afternoon. When we continue on Sports Radio AM 13 under the zone