Even before the conference move became public, Steve Sarkisian was already working to build an SEC-style roster.
AUSTIN, Texas — When Texas Longhorns head coach Steve Sarkisian was seven months into his first year on the Forty Acres, the bombshell news that the program was moving to the SEC sent shockwaves through college football.
A little more than three years later, No. 1-ranked Texas finally opens SEC play by hosting the Mississippi State Bulldogs on Saturday at Darell K Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium.
The No. 1 ranking for the Longhorns, the school’s first since the poll released on Oct. 25, 2008, reflects the journey to build an SEC-level program that Sarkisian embarked upon after arriving in Austin as the team’s hard-earned swagger heading into that contest reflects their hard work, preparation, and culture.
Coming from two stints at Alabama, the news of the SEC move only required a minor shift from Sarkisian, who had already noted the conference’s success in the College Football Playoffs — by 2021, the SEC had won four of the seven national championships in the new format. As Texas prepared for the move and Sarkisian built his program into a College Football Playoff contender, Georgia won two more.
“The thought was we had to build a roster and a team that could go beat the best team in the SEC anyway if we wanted to be a national champion,” Sarkisian said on Monday. “So when the announcement came, it was kind of like, well, we just kind of need to execute the plan now, because that’s what’s going to be needed moving forward here in a couple years when it all comes to light. It’s been a heck of a journey.”
The plan included adding big humans in the trenches on both sides of the ball with running the ball and stopping the run major points of emphasis, speed on the perimeter offensively, athleticism at linebacker and on the edge, and versatility in the defensive secondary.
Sarkisian’s first full recruiting class in 2022, which ranked No. 5 nationally, included three current starters on the offensive line as well as the top reserve, speed at running back, and Quinn Ewers, the No. 1 prospect in the 2021 class who is now a third-year starter for Sarkisian after transferring from Ohio State. Over the following two years, Sarkisian continued to build the program for the SEC with the No. 3 recruiting class in 2023 and the No. 5 recruiting class in 2024 while making strategic portal additions.
This offseason, that meant replacing the three NFL-bound receivers with proven speed and playmaking ability from the transfer portal, tight end depth, speed off the edge, and three defensive tackles to remain big in the trenches.
After securing enough starting-caliber pieces through high school and portal recruiting, building program depth to survive the grind of conference play was the next step the Longhorns managed to take forward this year.
“I felt like a year ago, we had built the team the way we wanted to look,” Sarkisian said. “I just didn’t know if we quite had the depth of where we needed to be across the board.”
With only five players left who were holdovers from the Tom Herman era, Sarkisian has also built his own culture in Austin, aided by Culture Wednesdays during the summer during which players form stronger bonds by opening up to each other. Now players speak with the voices of their coaches.
“The belief in our culture, the belief in the way we speak and the way we talk and the way we act, I think is real, it’s true to them. What I enjoy is being at dinner or being on the bus going to going to the hotel or listening to our guys or watching their press conferences or watching their interviews, I kind of get goosebumps when I hear what I say to them, and I’ve been saying to them over three years, come out of their mouth, and they’re not thinking about it, it just flows naturally for them. So now it’s not coach talk, that’s our team talk, that’s the way we’ve kind of been structured and that just means that not only have they bought into what we’re saying, they’re living it,” Sarkisian said.
Continuity on the staff has helped — Sarkisian has hired new coaches at running back and linebacker to replace assistants who took head coaching jobs and two new wide receivers coaches. Otherwise, his initial staff is still intact, including defensive coordinator Pete Kwiatkowski, who has drawn rave reviews from his players in recent weeks for his play-calling ability.
Super senior defensive back Jahdae Barron, the exemplar of versatility in the defensive backfield, is the highest-graded defender on the team, according to Pro Football Focus, and isn’t officially credited with any missed tackles this year.
But in his own telling, Barron did miss one in the opener against Colorado State, perhaps in part because of his astonishment at Kwiatkowski’s play call on a run towards him in the boundary.
“He’s a genius. He called a boundary blitz for me because he knew they’re running to the boundary and I missed the tackle. Me missing the tackle has nothing to do with him — that was me — but when he called the play and I was running back there and they ran the ball, I was like, ‘This is crazy,’ like, as the play was going, but, I mean, he’s a genius. He knows what’s he knows what’s going on and that’s just somebody that’s also always prepared,” Barron said on Monday.
Bolstered by the addition of co-defensive coordinator and linebackers coach Johnny Nansen, whose contributions include schematic tweaks like the dime defense debuted in the opener and a fiery personality that has connected well with the young linebackers, the Texas defense currently ranks No. 9 nationally in SP+ and tied for first in scoring defense with 5.5 points per game allowed through the non-conference schedule. But even Ole Miss, tied with Texas atop the nation in scoring defense, hasn’t held every opponent to 12 points or less as the Longhorns have.
It’s a group playing with enough determination that players throughout the depth chart are making plays, including late interceptions in each home game — one picked off in the end zone to preserve the shutout win over Colorado State, one returned for a touchdown to cap the victory against UTSA, and one on a trick play as ULM tried to score its first touchdown.
As a team, the small culture moments stand out in some of the celebrations, like the one that followed redshirt freshman wide receiver/running back Ryan Niblett’s first touchdown, the final score for the Longhorns in their 51-3 win over the Warhawks. On a 4th and 3, Niblett had picked up the yardage necessary with his second effort and a late push from the backup offensive line, appeared to score on the next play before it was overturned on review, then finally punched the ball in on a one-yard run.
After offensive players went out onto the field to celebrate with Niblett, the defense gathered around him on the sideline.
I thought this celebration of Ryan Niblett’s TD last Saturday was a really awesome moment of insight into the team’s culture. #HookEm pic.twitter.com/xg9hzLOuxe
— Wescott Eberts (@SBN_Wescott) September 27, 2024
To Texas senior center Jake Majors, the moment was so special because injuries at the running back position forced Niblett to split time between running back and wide receiver during preseason camp, a crash course in a position he only tangentially had experience with after playing some quarterback in high school.
“He just did it without any questions and then just to see him go score after all this work he’s put in to learn the position in such a short amount of time, like, that’s the stuff we celebrate because that’s someone who’s bought into the culture, someone who’s bought in and wants to be a part of this team. We celebrate stuff like that, so it was awesome to see him just score that touchdown,” Majors said on Monday.
That celebration looked similar to the celebration after junior Jack end Ethan Burke belly flopped into the end zone to cap his 30-yard interception return against UTSA.
“We’re going to try to critique the dive by Burke there, but I think that’s the beauty of our team, like the excitement on that play — it looked like about half our team was trying to run into the end zone to celebrate with him in a score that’s 56-7. You don’t see a lot of teams together like that,” Sarkisian said after the game.
In discussing the grind of SEC play, especially as it relates to the expanded playoff format, Sarkisian often mentions the need for depth, but in assessing the first Texas season in its new conference, he also pointed to the consistent mental intensity necessary to avoid letdowns producing bad losses, an area where these Longhorns are showing the right attributes.
“I think they’re so focused on what we need to do that we stay really consistent in our approach throughout the week. We stay really consistent in pregame warm ups. We stay really consistent when we come out of the locker room,” Sarkisian said on Monday.
“This group’s confident, and their confidence comes from the belief of the preparation that they put into it. And so I love that our personality is coming out of this team — I think we’ve got a pretty cool swagger about us right now, but that swagger has been earned because of the work that they put in, day in and day out.”
Whatever swagger the Longhorns had in all those seasons between the 2009 and 2023 conference championships, it certainly wasn’t earned in the same way this group has earned their swagger.
Normally one of the best-spoken players on the team, super senior linebacker David Gbenda found himself at a loss to describe that swagger in one word, spending 30 seconds trying to guide himself through the answer until settling on, “It’s just Texas.”
“I feel like at Texas, when you take this job, it just means more here, too. You know that there’s a standard here that is very high and there’s an expectation of performance,” Sarkisian said on Monday. “There’s an expectation that we’re going to compete for a conference championship, year in and year out, and there’s an expectation that we’re competing for a national championship. So the conference may have changed, but our standards and our expectations really haven’t.”
It’s just Texas.
It is just Texas, a team with a No. 1 ranking finally attached to it again finally heading into its first game in the conference it was built for even before it was built for it, and with the type of earned swagger that makes them five-touchdown favorites for that first SEC game.
It’s just Texas.