With 27 new players and three new assistants, Sarkisian wants to focus on teaching and development to maintain the culture he’s built on the Forty Acres.
In the seventh week of winter conditioning for the Texas Longhorns, head coach Steve Sarkisian met with the media on Monday to discuss the offseason and the 15 looming spring practices that will begin on March 25 with three practices per week for five weeks, culminating with a practice on April 26 that will replace the Orange-White game.
Athletics director Chris Del Conte and his staff are formulating a plan for a Fan Day event instead of the spring game.
Sarkisian also took time to address the misperception that Texas is canceling the Orange-White game because of concerns about tampering, pointing out that the window to enter the portal closes on the day before they would have held the spring game.
“We’re not having a spring game because I’ve got 27 new faces on my roster that I need to take time to develop, and that development starts at the beginning of spring ball, where we’ve got to really build a foundation of understanding the whys of what we do, from how we practice to the drills that we do, to the foundational aspects of the offense, the defense, the special teams, of where we build and then where we grow from there,” Sarkisian said.
The first four weeks of winter conditioning were primarily spent with strength and conditioning coach Torre Becton and his staff before beginning to incorporate some functional training based on position leading into spring break, which begins on March 17.
When the Horns return, they will start spring practice, which will look markedly different than in years past because of the 16-game season Texas just completed, as well as roster and coaching staff turnover.
With the Longhorns sending 14 players to the NFL Combine and losing another nine players to the NCAA transfer portal during the winter window, Sarkisian has 27 new players on his roster for the spring — 22 early enrollees and five transfer additions — that make up almost 35 percent of his current roster, which does not include the four summer enrollees from the No. 1-ranked recruiting class in 2025.
Sarkisian also had to replace three assistants who took promotions as running backs coach Tashard Choice took over the same role for the Detroit Lions, defensive pass game coordinator and secondary coach Terry Joseph returned to his hometown to coach for the New Orleans Saints, and safeties coach Blake Gideon was named the new defensive coordinator at Georgia Tech.
It’s an unusual amount of turnover for Sarkisian’s staff, which has benefited tremendously from its continuity and stability over the last several years. Texas is also taking advantage of new NCAA rules passed last summer that removed the limit on on-field assistants, allowing the Horns to promote analysts Mike Bimonte and Keynodo Hudson and add La’Allan Clark.
“Now the challenge for us as a coaching staff is to grow quickly — we’ve got to build the foundation, then we’ve got to grow because I do believe we have a talented football team, but we have some youth and we have some inexperience, and I’m really pressing upon everybody in our program, coaches, staff members included, to take the next step and to develop the leadership that’s needed on this team, because who we were a year ago, individually, we’ve got to be better than this year, right? We can’t remain the same, so everybody’s got to grow,” Sarkisian said.
To aid that development, Sarkisian is taking a teaching-focused approach to spring practice similar to NFL OTAs. When Texas typically practices, it’s a “two-spot operation” with the ones against the threes on one practice field and the twos against the fours on the other practice field.
“This spring, especially early on, we’re going to be on one field. As coaches, we’ve got a lot of new faces on our roster that I feel like we all need to be in accord and work in that way, and so maybe minimizing some of the team reps, especially for our older players, and really kind of getting some of these new faces involved,” Sarkisian said.
“And it’s giving me an opportunity to evaluate all the players that are there, but also help our coaches get kind of caught up to speed with who we are and what we do and why we do what we do. Some of that is extended individual period where we can really get our fundamentals and our techniques right. Like I said, to build that foundation.”
As a result, the Longhorns will have fewer contact periods and more teach periods with more controlled scrimmages instead of going for 140 plays.
“Just a little bit of a shift philosophically, as I touched on even back in December, actually, when I first brought this up. The NFL model is such that I think that they teach really well, and it’s something as I’ve studied those guys and I’ve gotten around them here the past few years — you guys know I like to do that in the springtime is go see NFL teams — is making sure we’re teaching really well, making sure that we’re developing and growing as a program, and not just our young players, but really developing our older players to be really dialed into the details of what we’re trying to do. And so again, I feel like you have to in this day and age, be adaptable and not be afraid of change and I think this is an area where we can grow as a program to be better suited for the challenges of the schedule as we know what it was here last season,” Sarkisian said.
