What does Sarkisian mean for the Texas passing game?

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AUSTIN, Texas — The announcement by the University of Texas that Steve Sarkisian is the UT football team’s 31^st  head coach was met with the expected fanfare. The Longhorns’ new leader won more than half of his games as head coach at Washington, where his 5-7 mark in his first season — remember, he took over a team that had gone 0-12 the year before — turned heads across the country. He then…

He then went to USC, where he started his playing career and previously had served as an assistant coach, and went 12-6.

But make no mistake: having head coaching experience on the résumé is a good thing, but it was his work as an assistant coach that landed him in Austin. After all, Sarkisian won the Broyles Award, given annually to the nation’s top assistant coach, and the FootballScoop Offensive Coordinator of the Year award in 2020, and the former BYU star has a reputation for his work with quarterbacks … and with good reason. At Washington, he made “Who’s He?” quarterback Jake Locker into a first-round pick in the NFL Draft, where he was selected eight overall by the Tennessee Titans in 2011.

To see what Sarkisian’s arrival could mean for the Longhorns, consider two of his former passers:

At USC, he inherited an offense piloted by Cody Kessler, who had a solid season the year before his new coach arrived, completing 236 of 361 passes (65.4 percent) for 2,968 yards, 20 touchdowns and seven interceptions — numbers virtually any coach would glad accept from a returning quarterback. In his first season under Sarkisian, Kessler went from a solid college passer to sensational, connecting on 315 of 452 passes (69.7 percent) for 3,826 passing yards, good for 11^th in Div. I. Better yet, Kessler lit up opposing defenses for 39 passing touchdowns — only three Div. I quarterbacks threw more — while offering up just five interceptions, fewer than all of the nation’s top passers except Oregon star Marcus Mariotta. While they were at it, Sarkisian and Kessler made wide receiver Nelson Agholor into a 104-catch first-round draft pick.

If his work with Kessler was impressive, what he did last season in Alabama bordered on the absurd. The Crimson Tide has an enviable problem in the sense that anonymous backups on the bench often are exceptional players, only languishing on the sideline because of a stockpile of NFL-worthy talent that requires a dose of patience.

Such was the case at Bama, where Mac Jones spent 2019 as Tua Tagovailoa’s caddy with a somewhat forgettable name. He got a little playing time in Alabama’s lopsided victories, but anyone who claims to have seen Jones’s 2020 season coming is lying. Jones’s stat line from last season, when he led his team to the national championship in his only year as the team’s starting quarterback, looks like it includes numbers from a video game: 311-of-402 passing works out to an absurd completion 77.4 percent completion rate. He threw for exactly 4,500 yards Kessler’s gaudy numbers by throwing 41 touchdown passes and just four interceptions. Yes, Alabama gave Jones a roster of future NFL talent to whom he could throw, but he still had to get the ball to those teammates in order for them to catch it … which he did, and they did.

Sarkisian is a meticulous teacher and innovative play caller who has shown an ability to tailor his offense to match the talents of his players.

When Sam Ehlinger was injured in the Valero Alamo Bowl, he was replaced in the Texas lineup by Casey Thompson. While some fans internally feared the worst, all Thompson did was go 8-for-10 for 170 yards and four passing touchdowns in about half a game. UT’s 55-23 rout of Colorado had some suggesting that the Longhorns had discovered their quarterback of the future.

Maybe they did — that remains to be seen. Thompson’s numbers can not be extrapolated over a full season, of course — just imagine the touchdown passes totals he could put up with a full season under center.

Sarkisian won’t make Thompson, or any other quarterback, a national star overnight. But based on his track record, he has shown the ability to develop quarterbacks into top performers. If he can do that in Austin, he will have taken a major step forward in the process of putting his stamp on the Texas offense. A banner offensive season in his first year or two at Texas also very well could change the level of quarterback recruits who consider UT. 

This is not a prediction of what will happen, only an admission of what could happen under Sarkisian, based on his previous results.

Quarterback is not the only position that needs addressing; after all, no skill players have much success without a strong offensive line leading the way. But if the Horns can bolster the line, and couple a superior passing game with a ground attack led by rising star Bijan Robinson, and the Texas offense could go from solid to explosive.

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