Jeff Howe

I've been stuck on Sark's Aug. 5 quote for the last few days. I hope this isn't something that lingers, but this offense clearly needs something positive in a hurry to have any hope of righting the ship.

The line just doesn't block zone run consistently, which takes time and is more about understanding the play design than losing a battle at the point of attack. There's a lot of guys standing around watching the pile, which is more often than not a missed assignment rather than someone just getting beat.

The Texas offense’s inability to move the ball consistently and maximize scoring opportunities through three games is staggering. The Longhorns enter the non-conference finale at home against a 0-3 Sam Houston club on Saturday (7 p.m., SEC Network+), averaging 24 points per game and 5.39 yards per play. Steve Sarkisian’s fifth season running the program is off to the worst three-game start Texas has experienced on offense since 2014, when Shawn Watson’s unit averaged 20.7 points per game and 4.57 yards per play through the first three games of the Charlie Strong era. The reality of where the Longhorns are offensively, 18 days away from a trip to Florida for the SEC opener, is sobering. Injuries have sidelined Quintrevion Wisner, C.J. Baxter Jr., DeAndre Moore Jr. and Emmett Mosley V through the non-conference schedule, compounding the experience issues Sarkisian knew existed on offense, even if Arch Manning had a full complement of weapons around him. “I'm not naive to think we wouldn't have some growing pains,” Sarkisian said during his weekly news conference on Monday. “I just want those growing pains to... I want to get tall as fast as we can and feel good and start playing. That's the race that we're in. I'm comfortable in saying we're going to get there. I just want to get there sooner rather than later.” Manning has been under the gun publicly since he put up a clunker in last Saturday’s 27-10 win over UTEP, with an 11-for-25, 114-yard performance through the air. While he accounted for the offense’s three touchdowns (one passing and two rushing), the fifth start of Manning’s career was marred by a forgettable second quarter, one in which he went 2-for-12, including 10 consecutive incomplete passes, for 15 yards and an interception. When it comes to helping Manning get back on the right track, Sarkisian said he feels “good about the process that we're in right now,” adding that Manning “had a great practice this [Monday] morning.” “So many times, what happens is you can start looking at yourself, beating yourself up, focusing on yourself. Well, it's already hard enough. The other team is already trying to beat you up,” Sarkisian said. “The other team is already trying to knock you down, so let's not self-inflict wounds. “Let's take some of that frustration and anger out on them.” Nothing Sarkisian said throughout training camp foreshadowed the struggles the No. 1 team in the preseason Associated Press Top 25, a club whose players spoke openly about their national championship aspirations while being quarterbacked by the odds-on favorite for the Heisman Trophy, has experienced. Still, what he said roughly four minutes into his post-practice availability on Aug. 5 could be a massive red flag missed by virtually everyone with a pulse on the squad, especially since it might be the best way to describe the current state of the Texas offense. “One thing for us that I think, with players that are trying really hard, we have to learn to feel... we have to learn how to deal with disappointment a little bit better. What I mean by disappointment is not every play is going to go perfect,” Sarkisian said. “You might miss a block, you might not catch that ball, you might not get the yardage you thought you were going to get on the run, but you've got to get onto the next play. You’ve got to give the next play the credit it deserves because that next play has a life of its own. I think, right now, a little bit on offense, we're trying so hard that there's this level of disappointment, that we're carrying some of that to the next play and some of those mistakes are compounding on top of one another for certain players. We've got to improve upon that and, as a coach, once you can identify that, we can talk to that, we can coach to that, but I think that's something we can improve upon.” Even if Sarkisian, his assistant coaches and other staff members did everything they could to resolve the problem at the time, the Longhorns are still working through it on some level. This is a time when offensive leadership must step up. Unfortunately, the leaders on that side of the ball are on the mend physically (Cole Hutson is on the list of players whose health will be monitored leading up to Saturday’s game, along with Baxter, Moore and Wisner), aren’t playing up to their potential (along with Manning and Ryan Wingo’s struggles, D.J. Campbell has the second-most accepted penalties against him among FBS offensive linemen with five, according to Pro Football Focus) or are gaining the experience they need to maximize their leadership capabilities. The Longhorns won’t get out of their current predicament overnight. Sarkisian said on Monday that “leadership always starts with us as coaches." He remains confident that the offense will eventually get over the current dilemma. Nevertheless, with only one opportunity left to work on itself before entering the SEC portion of its schedule, Texas needs a heightened sense of urgency when analyzing and attacking its problems. “We want to see a well-oiled machine offensively, on special teams, on defense, playing our best football when our best is needed,” Sarkisian said. “We've got to get there as quickly as possible.” View full news story

It's nice to watch Red Zone on a Sunday and see a lot of Longhorns across the league.

Angle or not, Josh Simmons was on some Larry Allen stuff to deny Mukuba a pick-six.

This is the same Turkish League club Dogus Balbay played for and and helped lead to two EuroLeague titles:

In all honestly, I can’t looked beyond Sam Houston with this team right now. You don’t have time to envy your neighbor’s house when yours is in dire need of repair.

I thought I mentioned Simon among my thoughts, but I left him out. That was my mistake. He was the unquestionable bright spot on offense today.

The Texas offensive line hasn't shown it can support such a style of offense.

To me, broken would imply that there's no hope. That the offense is beyond repair. Texas can put a competitive product on the field, but it's going to take Sark calling the game and changing the way he calls/manages a game to play off of the defense and special teams. It won't be sexy, but something has to give.

Can we just drop it and move to something else? Please!

Just stop responding to him.

I'm just asking that it ends.

JMarquette and Oldest Horn, take it somewhere else. Any other public posts directed at each other will be deleted.

Folks, please take your personal conversations elsewhere. If you need to address each other, don't do it in the thread.

I'm not throwing in the towel, but I'm worried. Very worried.

The Texas offense is bad. I won’t declare it broken. I believe it can be repaired and that the Longhorns can put a product on the field capable of helping them win games in the SEC. But Steve Sarkisian’s offense regressed from a middle-of-the-road performance against San Jose State to a clunker in Saturday’s 27-10 win over UTEP. After three games, Texas is 12-for-42 on third down, 5-for-12 on fourth down and 8-for-13 in the red zone with six touchdowns, two field goals, two interceptions and three turnovers on downs. The Miners outperformed the Longhorns on first down (5.3 yards per play for UTEP to 4.5 for Texas), committed fewer penalties (six penalties for 34 yards for the Miners, while the Longhorns were docked 81 yards on seven penalties), got a more efficient day throwing the football from Malachi Nelson (24-for-36, 209 yards and two interceptions) than the one Texas got from Arch Manning (11-for-25, 114 yards, one touchdown and one interception) and averaged more yards per play (4.4 to 4.2 for the Longhorns). Scotty Walden and his staff deserve a lot of credit for showing up ready to play. UTEP wasn’t intimidated by Texas, came to town with a sound game plan and made the Longhorns work for 60 minutes. The 4.2 yards per play by the Texas offense marked the fifth-worst single-game output under Sarkisian. The only games in which the Longhorns have been worse under Sarkisian were losses to Arkansas (4.0 yards per play) and Iowa State (3.2) in 2021, TCU (3.3) in 2022 and last season's regular-season meeting with Georgia (3.4). The issues on offense exist beyond failing to play to a standard or the personnel Texas didn’t have (Quintrevion Wisner, DeAndre Moore Jr. and Emmett Mosley V were out and C.J. Baxter Jr.’s day was done after one carry). Sarkisian’s attack lacks an identity and whether it was Manning’s erratic afternoon (10 consecutive incompletions at one point), the times the offensive line lost the battle at the point of attack (the Miners didn’t record a sack, but they had five tackles for loss and 12 of the Longhorns’ 56 official rushing attempts either lost yards or went for no gain) or poor situational execution, the Texas offense found different ways to stumble throughout the day. The week leading up to the Sam Houston game next Saturday (7 p.m., SEC Network+) will be a time when Sarkisian must look in the mirror and determine a course of action on offense. The offense Sarkisian wants (and the one a lot of other people, myself included) isn’t one the Longhorns can have right now. With one non-conference game left, Sarkisian must take the information he’s gathered so far and try to build confidence across the board by building on what the offense can do well. It might mean that Manning runs the ball more than what Sarkisian initially expected (he ran for two touchdowns, and he and Matthew Caldwell had the longest runs from scrimmage on Saturday, both recording 14-yard gains). It could mean figuring out which portions of the short passing game can get Manning in a rhythm early in the game so that the defense doesn’t automatically play coverage to prevent the deep ball, rendering the passing game helpless, which is what it was for almost the entirety of the UTEP game. Sarkisian and Kyle Flood could examine personnel along the offensive line and try a different combination. Whatever answers Sarkisian comes up with, Texas can’t have a repeat performance of Saturday’s debacle the rest of the way. Even though the defense held up their end of the bargain (six tackles for loss, sacks by Hero Kanu and Zina Umeozulu and interceptions by Jelani McDonald and Graceson Littleton while holding the Miners to a 4-for-13 performance on third down and an 0-for-3 effort on fourth down) and the kicking game is showing signs of growth (Jack Bouwmeester got back on track with a 47.8-yard net punting average, Mason Shipley went 2-for-2 on field goals and Ryan Niblett had a 49-yard punt return), the offense is operating at a level so far below a championship standard that it’s hard to look beyond the next game on the schedule when envisioning the trajectory on that side of the ball. View full news story

OTF learned that Jim Schlossnagle and the Longhorns have picked up a verbal commitment from 2027 OF/RHP JJ Utash. The 6-foot-4-inch, 205-pound two-way prospect from New Mexico is one of the top 2027 prospects in the country.

I slept on this after finishing it yesterday and concluded that the one thing you get with inexperienced players is inconsistent play. Even the most talented players I've seen come through the program had points in their careers when you didn't know what you'd get from them from one game to the next. That's the tough thing with an inexperienced team. The ceiling is high for a lot of the pieces Texas has, but it could take a minute for the floor to come up to where the end results aren't so erratic.

AUSTIN, Texas — Steve Sarkisian wasn’t far from the truth when he joked on Monday about Colin Simmons leading the nation in penalties. According to Pro Football Focus, the Texas EDGE has been assessed with four penalties through two games, tying him with Ohio safety Jalen Thomeson and Colorado State EDGE JaQues Evans for the FBS lead. The number of penalties charged to Simmons is almost equal to the team-leading five pressures PFF has credited him with causing. Simmons (five tackles, 0.5 tackles for loss, 0.5 sacks and two quarterback hurries) is off to a slow start relative to the lofty preseason expectations placed upon him. With that said, he’s had a bigger impact heading into the seventh-ranked Longhorns’ game against UTEP on Saturday (3:15 p.m., SEC Network) than what his raw numbers indicate. Simmons’ PFF pass rush grade of 84.2 is tied for No. 8 in the SEC (No. 36 nationally). His 10.3 PFF pass rush productivity rating (a formula that combines sacks, hits and hurries relative to how many times someone rushes the passer) is tied for the 25th-best in the conference, with Ty’Anthony Smith (18.8), Anthony Hill Jr. (18.2) and Brad Spence (12.5) ahead of Simmons among Texas defenders. Simmons’ win percentage (percentage of "wins" against blocking on non-penalty pass rush snaps) of 31 trails only the percentages recorded by Spence (37.5) and Trey Moore (31.3) for the third-best tally on the Longhorn defense. The PFF numbers indicate Simmons isn't too far away from becoming the pass-rushing force Texas needs him to be. The most significant hurdle for Simmons to clear on his way there could be cutting down on the penalties he’s drawing, which could be occurring due to, as Sarkisian said, the reigning Shaun Alexander Award winner “trying a little too hard.” “He's trying to jump the snap count,” Sarkisian said. “He's just got to be more mindful.” While pointing out that Simmons had no penalties and combined with Maraad Watson for a sack in the second half of last Saturday’s 38-7 win over San Jose State, Sarkisian said the key to Simmons unlocking his game-changing presence is as simple as settling down and focusing on his role within Pete Kwiatkowski’s defense. “You don't get 10 sacks in one play,” Sarkisian said. “You play within the confines of the defense. You play within the confines of the other defensive linemen, of when your rush attempts are there and how to play. You apply the game plan. “I thought we missed three sacks in this game,” he added. Simmons and Brad Spence were responsible for two of the three missed opportunities Sarkisian said the Longhorns had against the Spartans to get quarterback Walker Eget on the ground. “Our whole rush plan, if you were an edge rusher, was to rush to the upfield shoulder of the quarterback,” Sarkisian said. “All over the tape, when he got pressure, he scrambled around. He never went up in the pocket. Well, we didn't do that. We came flat and he ran around us three times. “We have to apply the things that we work on and practice.” When asked on Monday what he could do or say to help get Simmons going, Ethan Burke said that the Longhorns have only played their “first two games of a long season.” The third game against the Miners pits the Texas pass rushers against well-traveled quarterback Malachi Nelson, who has only been pressured on 12 of his 56 dropbacks (17.6 percent through two games). Nelson is 1-for-7 for 49 yards and has been sacked three times under pressure, according to PFF. If Simmons follows the advice Sarkisian and Burke have offered up publicly, he can put the struggles he's experienced through the first two games of his sophomore season in the rearview mirror. “I think he’s going to be just fine,” Burke said of Simmons. “Something I would say is just be confident and play fast. I think he will.” View full news story

Yes. He was in on the Jerrick Gibson fumble late in the game.