The Craig Way Show

Steve Sarkisian on how Texas is preparing for Davis Warren and Michigan

Hear the rest of Steve Sarkisian's thoughts as Texas prepares for Michigan on Saturday. Hear his comments on Ryan Wingo's performance, Ryan Niblett's double-duty, and the challenge of facing a QB that doesn't have a lot of game tape like Davis Warren.

Duration:: 15m
Broadcast on:: 05 Sep 2024
Audio Format:: mp3

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We've heard him talk about his wide receiver room, quarterback play, the enormity of the game. Another question about the receiving court deals with freshmen, Ryan Wingo, while being leading pass catcher in the contest. At what point was it that Sarkees saw that from Wingo that he knew that he'd be ready for a stage this big? Well, I think the thing about Ryan, even throughout the recruiting process and then early on when he got here, there was a real sense of maturity about him. He's a worker. He loves football. He's humble. He knows that he is not a finished product, but yet he continues to work every day. And as he gets incremental growth and incremental success, he just continues to stack that on top of the work that he's already put in. And so, like I said, I value the humility, but I also value the work ethic and I also value the confidence that he has in himself to go do the things that he's doing. And so, he's just got a great demeanor about him, and he goes about his business the right way, not only on the field, but off the field. Speaking of putting in the work and work ethic, there's another guy who's been grind in a way like that because he said to grind it more than one position of late, and that's Ryan Niblet. Now, Niblet, of course, is a receiver, but Niblet played a lot of running back in high school. And with the shortage in the running back room, there's that term again, and apparently, that's the new thing, Cam, by the way, that's driving a lot of folks on social media crazy, is to use terms like the quarterback room, the running back room. And there's a lot of get off my lawn, older guys. What is the deal like calling it the quarterback room, the wide receiver room? What's the necessity there? Somebody pointed this out. In fact, it was Susan Halliburton used to be the beat writer for Long 1 football for the Austin American States. And she pointed out it was in some social media conversation that she first heard this term. And I did as well, first used by Long 1's offensive coordinator, Greg Davis, back in the heady days of that first decade of the 2000s, when Texas had the 10 consecutive seasons of nine or more wins, and they gave us nine consecutive seasons of 10 or more wins, included in that going into the Rose Bowl. And most talked about Rose Bowl against Michigan this week of January 1st of 2005, followed by the 2005 national championship season that ended in that January 4th, 2006, Rose Bowl, and then three years later, back playing for the national championship in the BCS national championship game against Alabama. During that time, when Greg Davis was the offensive coordinator, there were times when if, say Keith Wharlin and I and Keith was working with me on the broadcast and Roger Wallace would come over as well. He was on the sidelines force back in those days. And we sit in the office with Greg Davis and look at film and talk about different quarterbacks and stuff like that. And Greg would say, he would say, well, you know, so-and-so, and so-and-so, and he'd say, he's a lot of good talent in that room. So he would say it in that room. That's the first time I ever really heard of it. And obviously, what the visualization is, is a guy sitting in the film room with their position coach or coordinator looking at looking at things. That's where it came from. But I know some people kind of get worn out on that, just like they get worn out on saying the whole title, national football league, and so just NFL. That's happened in the past few years. It is what it is. That's one of those things that there's lots of those phrases, I guess, that kind of drive folks nuts at one point. But in talking about a guy who balances between the rooms, Ryan Niblet, wide receiver in the wide receiver room, but also in the running back room, because they used him, especially when there were injuries in that running back room, the transition and the adjustment to being in both rooms or working with both units, came on pretty quickly for him down the stretch. And so Sark was asked, what is a day in practice like for Ryan Niblet between working with the receivers and with the running backs? You know, I think the first thing is you have to remember, he has bank reps at the wide receiver spot, right? From all of last year, all throughout spring ball, all throughout summer. And so he is very comfortable and confident at the receiver spot. I think right now, we're really just trying to continue to hone in on the things at the running back position. And then when he is at wide out, you know, it's easy for him to fall back on the training that he's had, you know, for the last, you know, 16, 18 months, whatever that is. But also on top of that, he's become a real player force on special teams. And so that's a whole nother level of, you know, where we're relying on him is in the special teams aspect. And so I love what Ryan's done. You know, he's really changed his body composition. He's playing fast. He, you know, I think last Saturday, he hit over 22 miles an hour in game speed, which is, which is flying. And we thought about, we thought that about him out of high school. I think he was like a 10, 4, 10, 500 meter guy that is utilizing that speed now and it's been effective for him, not only like I said, on offense, but on special teams. Can you ever clock yourself? I have not, but it's definitely not 22 miles per. When I played baseball during through my sophomore year in high school, I think that's where it ended for me after that. But I did, just very quickly. It ended as I saw for you. In part because my high school at the time didn't have a baseball program. They developed one, but they didn't have one. And I don't know, maybe I would have made the channel. I didn't hit well enough to do it. I was a singles hitter, a slap hitter. I wasn't, I wasn't, I couldn't hit for power, but I, but I was pretty fast. And I was an outfielder. I could get to a lot of balls. And I remember when I was a sophomore in high school, my dad timed me one time. And the fastest I got up to, I don't remember an actual quote, unquote 40 time or whatever. But I got clocked one time at 15 miles per hour. It's pretty good. So I thought, Oh, okay, I'll be, I hear this guy dudes 22 miles per hour. And boys, I was, I was kind of happy and proud of myself to getting up to 15 miles per hour. And here's 22 miles per hour. Like Sarcos said, that's flying. That's, that's really moving. Okay. One more thing about receiving the football, whether you're talking about a receiver or whether you're talking about a running back. What we're discussing and what Sarcos asked about was the screen game. And it's important to the offense. How important is the screen game to Sarcos offensive game plan? And does he look at any other specific coaches to use offensive concepts from? I don't think it's a secret. We like the screen game. Again, you know, we have an adage on offense. The more things we can do really well, we feel like the harder we are to defend. And so we're a really good running team. We're really good RPO team. We're really good dropback pass team for really good play action pass team. And if we're really good screen team, we're really good tempo team, whatever that is, we're trying to do as many things as we can really, really well. And we do value the screen game. And like, you know, every game is different. Some games, the screen game is a real factor in other games. Maybe that's not something that we're as focused on. But it is something I think can, you know, create value for yourself on offense. And I know we spend time on it to be good at it. But I also know from a defensive perspective, you know, you have to practice that when you're getting ready to play us. Speaking the defensive perspective from his own team's defensive perspective, Sarcos asked about looking at the two quarterbacks, Davis Warren and Alex Orgy. Now, Orgy actually threw a touchdown pass just as Davis Warren did. But you didn't have to watch very much of that game last Saturday night to see who's the passer and who's the run based quarterback. Orgy is definitely more comfortable running the football and being more mobile and being able to throw on the run. Warren, much more of your standard pocket passer type quarterback. But Davis Warren's story in itself is quite impressive. A young man who had not made a start since 2019, who battled leukemia, whose very health and well-being was in the balance for a while, then came back. That Sarcos also mentioned, here's another spoiler alert from last night on one weekly. Sarcos mentioned that Davis Warren went to high school or middle school with his daughter, I think it was with Sarcos daughter, I think he mentioned last night. But Davis Warren has really turned his own fortunes around once he got healthy and stayed with it. And Sarcos asked, how challenging is it to face a quarterback like Davis Warren when you don't have much to go on. That was his first start as a mention since 2019, to look at on tape. Well, I think the challenges is Davis's ability to operate their offense. There are so many things that systematically they do that are on the quarterback at the line of scrimmage. And I think that that's why he's definitely got a good head on his shoulders and can make those necessary checks and different things that the line of scrimmage, protection changes, so on and so forth. I think naturally, he's probably got to be a really good competitor. You don't get to become the quarterback at Michigan without having a real competitive spirit about you. And I'm sure you get a game under your belt and you come out with a win, you start to develop that confidence and a willingness to trust your ability to make some of those plays. And so, he'll do that, and Orgy's going to play. I think it's critical for us to recognize when he is in the game. And I think it's going to be critical for us to recognize if they leave both of them on the field at the same time and how we're going to adjust to that if they're on the field at the same time. So we have to be ready for things that maybe they haven't put on tape yet, and one of which being those two guys being on the field together. And one more bit of sound from Kurt Sark. When you play 77 guys, as he did last Saturday, and even if you're not counting the ones who get in the second half, once way down the depth chart, the walk-ons, things like that, even if you're just talking about you're too deep, you've got a lot of guys who share snaps and reps. So Sark was asked how he balances that out. He and his coaching staff with guys who may have made a play, but they're coming out after that play or two plays later, whether somebody else is going in, not because of something they did right or wrong. It's just the rotation of how it's going and what they want from a certain guy in a certain down and distance or formationally. However, they want to do it. And Sark was asked about that. Really simple. We just reiterate to the players, don't count your reps, make your reps count. And it's a really simple formula that way. It's not how many times you're on the field. It's what you do when you're on the field and maximizing those opportunities when they come your way. Oddly enough, Ryan Wingo and John Tate Cook didn't start in the game, but I think they might have had maybe the most yards and I think seven catches between them as backups in essence. And so we really don't look at them as backups. We look at them. We've got a great rotation at the receiver spot. Obviously, Matt and IB played really well for us. And the one guy who started, John Jamore, didn't have a catch. And so you just don't know in our system. And so again, we just want to make our reps count. We don't try to count our reps and we just tried to play to the best of our ability. And with this group now more than ever, we tell them to empty the tank because the guy next guy can go in. You can get, you can, you know, get your win back and then we'll get you back out on the field. I like that phrase. Don't count your reps. Make your reps count. That's a great coach speak thing to have there. All right. Come on next. Cameron and I take a look around the NFL and make our preseason predictions on how it's going to go in the national football league. That's next on sports radio. I am 13 under the zone of the IR radio app. Breaking news and this one is almost unbelievable. Yeah, it's all about new customers at Bet365 because they get $200 in bonus bets when they bet $5 and even better bonus bets can be used on the spread totals and player props. There you have it. Bet $5 to get $200 in bonus bet and see why it's never ordinary at BetV6 5. The gambling problem? Call or text 1-800-Gambler. 21+ only. Must be physically located in Colorado. Chams in conditions apply.