Sure, Texas football coach Steve Sarkisian knows it’s hot. He just spent a couple of hours Wednesday in the mid-day heat in a black Longhorns T-shirt, orchestrating the first summer practice of the season at the Frank Denius Fields on the eastern edge of campus.
Yes, Sarkisian also knows his talented team has genuine hopes of playing football until Jan. 20, the date of the Bowl Championship Series title game that caps the first 12-team playoff.
But he also knows he can’t worry about pacing his squad just quite yet — especially as he and his coaching staff try to set the tone for a program coming off a 12-2 season, a Big 12 championship and the school’s first appearance in a BCS playoff.
More: Even without complete continuity on defense, Pete Kwiatkowski ready for Texas’ 2024 season
“We’re going to go hard for the first two and a half weeks,” Sarkisian said during his first press conference of the preseason. “I think that’s a mindset. You know, we believe in the toughness in our program. And we have to push them (the players) to places where maybe they think they couldn’t go and then excel in those places.”
Sarkisian tempered that tough talk with a shoutout to his medical staff and the “sports science” that he says increases the efficiency of practice as well as the safety of the players. But the message was still sent with the two-hour practice that kicked off just before 3 p.m., and the players seemed to embrace the challenge.
“We had really good energy, and the guys came out with really good intent,” Sarkisian said. “It just felt great to be back on the practice field.”
Now entering his fourth season as the Texas coach, Sarkisian has plenty of reasons to feel good, even if his team has to navigate the treacherous SEC for the first time. He cited a veteran offensive line and a talented set of running backs as well as a three-year starter qt quarterback in Quinn Ewers.
“And I feel like we’re faster (on defense),” he said. “Especially from an edge perspective and then the second level with our backers and our star and then even into the back end. We’ve got real speed back there.”
More: Longhorn Confidential: Getting ready for the first practices of the 2024 football season
So, what worries Sarkisian the most, especially as Texas will ramp up scheme-specific practices in the coming weeks in preparation for the Aug. 31 opener against visiting Colorado State?
“There’s a ton,” he said. “Every year you go into camp, I try to take nothing for granted. You try to let things play out the way that they do and then you start to figure out as you go the strengths of your team and then start pouring into the strength of the team.”
More: Now on scholarship, Texas Longhorns kicker Bert Auburn draws praise from coach
Who becomes the go-to receivers in a rotation full of transfers and freshmen that looks seven deep? How can the Longhorns replace a pair of All-American defensive tackles in T’Vondre Sweat and Byron Murphy, last year’s breakout defensive stars? And what can Texas do to shore up a pass defense exposed by quality quarterbacks throughout the 2023 season? Personnel decisions must be made, even if Sarkisian is picking from a deep pool of talent.
“I feel like I’m crying from a yacht right now,” he said with a chuckle. “You know, to some degree, that’s a good problem, that we have too many good players. That’s the idea: You try to recruit really well, you try to recruit really good players that have great character and that work hard, and I think that’s what we can say about these guys right now. They work extremely hard. They work hard with one another. And I hope they make it really difficult on us. That’s a good problem to have.”
This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Steve Sarkisian sets tempo, expectations in first Texas football practice
