Stop Squinting

The team Texas fans have dreamed of is here, all that's left is the winning.

Every summer for the past 13 years, Texas fans have needed to squint in order to muster belief for the upcoming fall. We’ve been forced to narrow our eyes at the roster, the coaches and the administration and then talk ourselves into hopeful, albeit, improbable realities. Even though a lot of Texas teams don’t deserve the benefit of the doubt, us fans have given it to them anyway. We’ll make blind leaps of faith on our collective jump-to-conclusions mats then throw our hands up in the air and say “this has to be the year, we can’t suck again, can we?” We’ve become well versed in “if/then” statements like “if (insert underwhelming four-star prospect with a familiar name from several recruiting classes ago) will breakout this year then his position group won’t be a liability” or “if this happens and that happens and then that happens THEN we will make the playoff.” Surely we’ve learned by now “if/then” is an exercise in futility, Texas won’t be rewarded just because the fans are due for a great season or the fact our team has an iconic logo on their helmets. When you’re wandering the desert, no amount of wishcasting will turn those distant mirages into water.

I’ve drunk my fair share of Kool-Aid in past summers and have long dreamed Texas’ return to glory would come in a thunderous reckoning that seems biblical in nature. I’ve incorrectly predicted that deafening return to glory, several times in fact. Unfortunately for the storyteller in me, sports rarely play out that way.

Las Vegas doesn’t annually predict Alabama and/or Georgia in the playoff because of the name across their chests, but because both programs have great processes, rosters that the NFL loves and depth at every position. Conspiracy theorists and media members like to blame Texas’ failures on meddling boosters with big pockets, politics and toxic cultures, but the primary cause of the Longhorns’ on-field shortcomings has been due to the fact that they’ve rarely had any of the three things I mentioned, until now. So fellow Longhorn fans, step away from the crazy wall because you can finally stop squinting.

1. Process

I’m reminded of the ‘Pounding the Rock’ mantra inspired by Jacob Riis that’s emblazoned everywhere in the San Antonio Spurs facility: “When nothing seems to help, I go and look at a stonecutter hammering away at his rock perhaps a hundred times without as much as a crack showing in it. Yet at the hundred and first blow it will split in two, and I know it was not that blow that did it, but all that had gone before.”

Great seasons and teams are built brick by brick, with foundations laid in previous years long before the dam bursts. Process is a loaded term, but it’s a hallmark of the Steve Sarkisian era in Austin. Like his mentor Nick Saban, mastering the process is the ultimate goal for the program writ large and once the process is mastered, the results will naturally follow. After the 2021 season featured many blown leads and porous defending, there were a lot of calls for Strength Coach Torre Becton and Defensive Coordinator Pete Kwiatkowski’s heads, but Sarkisian stuck with both, realizing that continuity was more of an asset to the program than continuing the revolving door of coaches coming through the 40 Acres. The Longhorns enter the 2023 season completely healthy, and they boasted a much-improved defense in 2022 that returns nearly everyone and has been supplemented by portal additions and talented freshman. Continuity matters. The best thing Tom Herman did while at Texas was to remain patient with Sam Ehlinger and allow him to grow. Texas fans saw Ehlinger grow tremendously between year one and two and should expect the same from a mullet-less and slimmed down version of Quinn Ewers. The combination of year two in Sarkisian’s offense and year three in a college program should make Ewers more resemblant of the player fans saw against Oklahoma than Oklahoma State.

Sarkisian has a dogged approach to recruiting, evident by his staff’s tireless pursuit of the kids they want in their program. In 2022 he gambled and offered just one quarterback, but it paid off as Sarkisian got the next member of football’s royal family: Arch Manning. Then in each of the last two cycles he’s received late flips from blue chip prospects in Tackle Kelvin Banks and Linebacker Anthony Hill. He’s committed to SEC size on the offensive and defensive lines and blazing speed at the skill positions. It’s not a noble approach and it seems obvious for a program on the doorstep of the SEC, but it towers over the recruiting processes that his predecessors engaged in. Late era Mack Brown was preoccupied with being usurped towards the end of his tenure, so he constantly changed position coaches and recruited lazily, settling for kids who would say yes to an early Texas offer and who often peaked athletically as juniors in high school. Charlie Strong actually had the best eye for talent of them all, but he was so in over his head with other aspects of the job that he was always scrambling at the finish line to fill his class before signing day. Tom Herman took a stuck-up approach to recruiting like he did with everything else, being selective with scholarship offers while also acting offended when a kid said no, which led to his classes being inflated by empty-calorie commitments who had decent rankings but were passed on by fellow blue bloods. Sark’s process has led to a complete rebuild of the Longhorns roster, one with experience, talent and upside that scouts love.

2. NFL Players

The last four national champions have had a minimum of three first rounders drafted off their teams and no less than 10 players selected throughout. If you want to sum up Texas’ failures, look no further than their performance in the draft. When pundits talk about Texas, they talk about how much the Longhorns fall short in comparison to their talent level. “Texas recruits so well, why do they lose to teams with inferior talent?” I won’t argue that the university and the program’s reputation deserve more than what we’ve been getting the last 13 years - no Texas teams should ever lose to Maryland and Kansas twice. But while the average fan might have looked at Texas rosters of the past and seen recruiting stars next to names, the NFL hasn’t been enticed. The NFL doesn’t reward talent based on the jersey, there are too many jobs at stake for that. Since 2014, Texas has had one or fewer players selected an abysmal four times, with a big fat zero after Sark’s first year (most of that due to Herman’s poor recruiting and development process). Critics and fans look at Texas rosters and see familiar names that they associate with star rankings and expect unrealistic results, where the NFL sees underdeveloped balls of clay that aren’t worth salvaging.¹

Now let’s look ahead at the 2024 draft and what the NFL thinks about Texas’ current roster. According to multiple sources and draft grades, Texas has 8-10 players that are locks to be drafted if they continue their current trajectory. Various first round mock drafts that I’ve seen have Quinn Ewers, Xavier Worthy, T’Vondre Sweat and J’Tavion Sanders all as potential first rounders. This doesn’t even begin to take into consideration players like running back Jonathon Brooks, nose tackle Byron Murphy, nickel Jahdae Barron, defensive tackle Alfred Collins or wide receiver Isaiah Neyor, who all could become draftable players with big seasons. Then there are the underclassmen who are all but first round guarantees, most notably Kelvin Banks, when they become eligible in 2024. Obviously, the Longhorns still have to go out and prove it on the field, but the NFL draft cupboard is no longer empty and that puts Texas more in line with the programs they want to become.

3. Depth

Many of the greatest college teams we remember were also the most fortunate, as even the legendary ones are an ankle turn or knee twist away from being forgotten. If you imagine 2005 Texas without Vince Young or 2019 LSU without Joe Burrow, you no longer have some of the greatest teams of all time. Though removing those players from said teams would cause them to fall short of the ultimate prize, their teams would still be competitive because of roster depth. One of the hallmarks of Nick Saban’s Alabama has been that they’re not as reliant on one single player like most college teams are. That’s not a luxury most programs have and it’s certainly not one Texas has enjoyed in the past decade plus. Look at how removal of one piece has crumbled recent Texas teams. We saw David Ash’s medical retirement end the Charlie Strong era before it even began, exposing just how bleak the quarterback situation in Austin really was. Additionally, Sarkisian’s first season in Austin served as a requiem for Sam Ehlinger as the team and culture fell apart without him holding it all together. Looking further, in Sarkisian’s first spring game he wasn’t even able to form a second-string offensive line with scholarship players.

https://twitter.com/CFBRep/status/1692311152389238974?s=20

The once reticent Sarkisian is now making claims to the media that it’s hard to distinguish between the ones and twos in fall camp. The recently patchwork second-string offensive line is now filled with talent that would exceed the best offensive lines of Strong and Herman’s teams combined. Every veteran led position group has talented youngsters waiting behind them. Lastly, the quarterback room might be the deepest it’s ever been at Texas. Malik Murphy or Arch Manning would be coveted by every blueblood in the nation and could step in should Quinn Ewers get injured or underperform with the arsenal of weapons at his disposal. Bad luck and injuries are inevitable in college football, but the truly successful programs can survive them with their next-man-up mentality. There are a few losses on this Texas team that would certainly hurt and lower general expectations, but there isn’t one which should prevent this team from falling short of its ultimate goal, a conference championship in the Longhorns’ final year in the Big 12.

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Credit Kyle Umlang for the image

This all might taste like burnt orange Kool Aid spiked with unfiltered optimism and maybe you’re reaching for your phone to call me a cab, but I wrote it all to say step away from the punch bowl. It’s not necessary to drink from it anymore. Kool Aid chugging denotes blind trust based in ignorance and crossing your fingers while hoping for the best. Or, it’s like anointing your brand-new coach with a national championship plaque that just has the years missing.

I’ll admit that I held this team at arm’s length for as long as I could. I’d occasionally engage in some news throughout the offseason, but I tried not to get sucked in. Then in April I listened to a podcast where Sark was the guest of some former NFL players. I’ve kept coming back to what he said when thinking about this upcoming season and his words cause me to not have to squint or drink Kool Aid or engage in whatever ritual fans need to do to inspire hope for the fall.

“It’s Year 3. It feels and looks like my team. The way the players talk, the way they act, what they look like…I’m like, ‘okay, now we’re about ready to go. This is what it’s supposed to look like.”

Results haven’t been instant in the Sark era, but if we take him at his word then they’re the only thing that’s yet to come.

1. Bijan Robinson finally broke the first round drought in the 2023 NFL Draft.

***Dance With Who Brung Ya readers! It’s great to be back with you for another fall of Longhorn football. I’ll come at you every week with the fan’s biased and emotional perspective on the successes and failures on The 40 Acres. I am hoping to mix some more stories in like the Arkansas piece from a few years back and even some additional content I think you’ll enjoy. Please share and tell your fellow fan friends to subscribe.