FCB247
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Steve Sarkisian has been on a lot of Zoom calls over the past week: with the media, lettermen, boosters and on Wednesday night with parents of current players, as Horns247 first reported prior to Wednesday's Zoom meeting.
You tend to get the unfiltered version of things when a coach is talking to Mom or Dad or both, because no one is going to hold a coach accountable like a parent. You knew one of the parents was going to ask Sarkisian about his alcohol dependency issues that caused him to get fired at USC in 2015.
Sarkisian didn’t blink.
“He talked openly about it, about how he’s had to own it and can now provide life experience to his players about how not to make the same mistakes,” one source who observed the call told Horns247. “A lot of parents struggled to read Coach Herman and what he was really all about, because so much of what he said sounded programmed. But I thought Sarkisian was matter-of-fact while also being transparent. It was refreshing.
“I’ll just say it: Sarkisian was way more direct and polished in his message to the parents than Herman, who just never really let you see his human side - only his ‘coach’ side.”
By the way, we continue to hear Tom Herman plans to spend time with his family and is in no hurry to get back into coaching for the 2021 season. His $15 million buyout will be paid out monthly over the remaining three years left on his contract (and will be offset by income earned in any new job), according to Herman’s contract.
We’ll get this out of the way right away - Sarkisian acknowledged he has one more on-field coaching position to fill (we’ve heard it will be a linebackers coach) - but Sarkisian didn’t give out any names.
Sarkisian did list all of his other coaches, and it read just the like the list we’ve been giving you:
Offensive coordinator/offensive line - Kyle Flood
Quarterbacks - A.J. Milwee
Tight ends/special teams coordinator - Jeff Banks
Running backs - Stan Drayton
Receivers - Andre Coleman
Speaking of Coleman, Sarkisian said in his Zoom call Wednesday night he had twice before tried to hire Andre Coleman as a receivers coach with the Atlanta Falcons and at Alabama. But on both occasions, Sarkisian said, he was “blocked by the head coach.”
“So it’s great happenstance that (Coleman) is already here at Texas,” Sarkisian said.
When Sarkisian talked about the defensive staff, he listed Pete Kwiatkowski as defensive coordinator and Bo Davis as defensive line coach. But he listed Terry Joseph as “secondary coach” and Blake Gideon as “safeties coach,” so that caused a little head-scratching.
Make sure you read our man Mike Roach’s breakdown of Pete Kwiatkowski’s defense posted Wednesday.
Sarkisian told players’ parents the Texas defense, “to the naked eye, will look like last year’s defense.”
The reason Sarkisian can say that is he hired a defensive coordinator in Kwiatkowski who basically runs a four-man front with two interior tackles as well as two, stand-up defensive ends and a nickel or dime package behind it.
Kwiatkowski typically has two, sideline-to-sideline linebackers on the field along with two corners, two safeties and a nickel back. But Kwiatkowski has had packages in the past in which he put seven defensive backs behind his four-man line.
Kwiatkowski’s defense stresses speed and athleticism across the board. He likes interchangeable tackles and ends, so he can more easily disguise tendencies and make it more difficult for the offense to make reads pre-snap.
Kwiatkowski likes interchangeable, cross-trained players in his secondary, too, so the offense can’t easily isolate conflict defenders in their RPO plays.
For two weeks, I’ve heard that Texas’ players on offense have been excited about Sarkisian while the defensive players have been on edge with uncertainty - largely because they didn’t know who would be their coordinator.
Sarkisian saying the Texas defense will resemble last year’s defense “to the naked eye” is helping players feel better about the direction of things, sources said.
“There’s been a lot of concern from the players on defense that they might be going back to a three-man front with a nose tackle and two ends in the 4i, and I can tell you, the portal probably would’ve filled up with defensive linemen, if that was the case,” one source close to the situation said.
“But learning that the new DC (Kwiatkowski) uses two interior tackles and two stand-up defensive ends and allows that front four to get up field and get after the quarterback put a lot of angst to rest.”
When it comes to strength and conditioning, Sarkisian said things will be done differently than in the past. Instead of focusing on how much weight players can lift/squat, the focus in strength training will be more about controlled weight and the speed of reps and how many reps.
I reported in the Morning Brew Wednesday that players were somewhat stunned by the upbeat, enthusiastic tone of strength coach Torre Becton in the players’ first workouts this week.
“In the past, everyone on the strength staff seemed to take on the personality of (Tom) Herman in workouts,” a source told Horns247. “And just like Herman could be cutting and always ready to call you out, so was the strength staff. Players liked and respected (strength coach) Yancy (McKnight), for the most part. But some of Yancy’s assistants seemed like they were trying to provoke you as much as push you.
“What we’ve had this week - the workouts have actually been fun, at times. We’re not used to that, that’s for sure. I’m sure this is warm-up, and all the intense stuff is coming.”
OK, one of the recurring themes of Sarkisian’s Zoom calls with UT’s lettermen as well as boosters is how Sarkisian is going to have to re-shape how many scholarships each position group is getting.
For instance, Sarkisian can’t believe Texas has 15 scholarship receivers and seven scholarship tight ends. Sarkisian would prefer eight to 10 scholarship receivers and about five scholarship tight ends.
That doesn’t mean Sark is about to run off players in each of those position groups. But he has been putting in overtime to determine where Texas needs help with February’s signing day fast approaching
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