The Blank Page

Steve Sarkisian's redzone struggles cast doubt on the the Longhorns ceiling and remind this writer of the daunting empty page.

It should be easy to write about Texas football right now. For the first time in a long time, being a Texas fan is fun in November and our beloved Longhorns have a lot going for them late into the season. To go rapid fire: recruiting is fun, Oklahoma fans now know the feeling of losing to Kansas, and Jimbo Fisher is preparing a Tony Montana-like defense of his piles of money against his usurpers in College Station. What’s more, Texas is ranked seventh in the first College Football Playoff rankings of 2023 – their first consequential ranking since the CFP was instituted a decade ago; and last Saturday, Texas beat a 5-2 BYU like a drum with Maalik Murphy in at quarterback. Lastly, the Longhorns are set to host #25 Kansas State in Austin for what will be their biggest home game of the season. So, writing should be easy, as it has been all season. But as I thought about what to write this week, I could only see the dreaded blank page. For many writers, its emptiness can be too difficult to overcome. It didn’t matter that the Longhorns are featured as the Big Noon Kickoff Game on Fox, or that they’re hosting just their seventh ranked matchup after Oklahoma since 2010 - I had nothing insightful to say about how Texas fans should feel, and I still don’t. A stab at writing earlier in the week would have looked like this: “Be excited Texas fans, or be nervous, because it’s going to be freaking hard to beat Purple Gandalf’s ghost seven times in a row. Like you, I hope Texas wins this weekend and doesn’t ruin my week by losing. But whatever, nobody is reading this anyway. After all, my Rangers fan friends are too excited to care about Kansas State and my Astros fan friends still have their heads in the trash can. So I’ll just go watch more Victor Wembanyama highlights. Hook ‘Em.”

The words always flow when I have something to say. Sitting down at the computer is simply the means to an end in those moments. It’s where I turn over the basket and dump all of the words that have been floating in my brain into a Word Document, but after the BYU game my imagination was empty and my mind kept traveling to the desolate empty page full of its frustration. “Maybe, I just won’t write this week,” I thought to myself, the equivalent of deciding to punt on third down.

At last, Steve Sarkisian and the redzone (or “red area” as he refers to it) popped into my mind. I pictured the empty page again. Then I saw Sark and the redzone. My thoughts drifted to an opening line in a short story I abandoned some time ago about a struggling writer who becomes famous after stealing another writer’s idea: “the blank page stared at the writer and he feared it might swallow him whole.” Though the story was too self-indulgent, I liked the opening line, and even the opening chapter for that matter, but in the end I couldn’t tie it all together, so I tossed the story aside and threw away the key. Some of Sark’s drives down resemble something like football poetry, don’t they? They march down the field with a ruthless efficiency and beautiful synchronization that make you forget you’re watching a violent game that’s meant to punish the opponent. Then, the Longhorns get to the redzone and it’s clunky, ugly, and oftentimes something like a faceplant. In those instances, the end product doesn’t match what we’ve seen before it. There’s no payoff in the form of cannon fire, and six points aren’t added to the scoreboard. There’s the blank page again. I thought of all these things, and they swirled together in my mind and finally, I was able to sit down and type.

The Longhorns rank dismally in redzone scoring percentage, coming in at 100^th in the country behind teams like UTEP, San Jose State and Louisiana Monroe. What’s worse, Texas has scored touchdowns on only 48% of its 33 trips to the redzone. Ineptitude from the one-yard line already cost Texas the Red River Shootout, but the struggles have continued since, and last weekend Texas failed three times against BYU after getting inside the 10. Besides Ewers’ injury, the woes in the red area serves as the proverbial elephant in the room for Texas and its fans. That’s not to say it isn’t difficult, it is, for a multitude of reasons: the defense tightens, the playbook shortens, and pressure mounts. But it’s more difficult to understand Texas’ struggles when you contrast it with the way they’re moving the ball prior to the redzone. The most simplistic explanation is that center Jake Majors is hobbled; left guard Hayden Conner is ineffective in run blocking; and right guard DJ Campbell is a redshirt freshman, leaving Texas with poor interior offensive line play when it becomes most important to bowl over the gut of a defense. There’s also a Tom Herman-like stubbornness to Sark’s play-calling when he is close to scoring. He’ll believe he called the right play and attempts to will it to work by calling it again. Sark’s biggest weakness might be his inability to use the tools he’s given rather than the ones he wants. Then, there are the failed reverses or inexplicably slow developing plays that result in turnovers or huge losses that seem like Sark is getting too cute, like me wanting to do a cheap impression of Cormac McCarthy in my writing after I finish one of his novels.

I’d love to see Sarkisian spread the field in the redzone and use concepts like the Xavier Worthy whip route that beat Iowa State last season. The Chiefs won the Super Bowl off such plays and Sark has admitted he’s not too prideful to steal great play designs - it’s not like he’s unaware they exist. Texas doesn’t have another team left on its schedule that can match its skill talent, so utilizing that advantage close to paydirt seems wise. Ultimately, the success of Texas’ season will hinge on improving its scoring percentage when they’re knocking on the door.

I’m not an X’s and O’s guy and I don’t know the answer to these struggles, only that I can understand them. It’s difficult to get an idea from your mind to paper, just like it’s difficult to tie up an offense’s drive with a bow. I can sense Sarkisian’s frustration about redzone execution - it’s as if his play sheet becomes a blank page when his offense arrives in front of the goal line. I don’t know how to help, but I sure can relate.