What Texas Longhorns football coach Steve Sarkisian has been able to get done with the program in recent years has been awesome, let's start there. Back-to-back trips to the national semifinal is nothing to sneeze at. Having said that...
Yeah, plenty of people are still furious with the veteran head coach over his terrible play-calling near the goal-line and his team down seven points on Friday night. The one play in particular that's going to haunt him came on 2nd down, with the Longhorns sitting at the one yard line.
The play before, Texas was stuffed. Okay, no big deal, just run it again. However, Sark had Ewers lineup out of the shotgun and then he pitched the ball backwards to Quintrevion Wisner, with things ending with a seven-yard loss. You know how the rest of the story goes.
While meeting with the media, Sark had a perfect chance to take blame for what was surely one of the worst decisions from a play-caller in the last 100 years. Instead, he decided to take a different route, blaming missed blocks for what happened. Seriously dude?
#Texas HC Steve Sarkisian speaks on the 1st & 2nd down calls on the 1-yard line vs. Ohio State. @ontexasfootball pic.twitter.com/WeFdwxZLz2
— CJ Vogel (@CJVogel_OTF) January 11, 2025
Texas HC Steve Sarkisian blamed missed blocks on his awful play call
"We had a plan to try and get the ball on the edge when we got down there," Sarkisian said. "They went to big people. I can't quite tell, it was on the far side of where it got leaky, but that's one of those plays where if you block it right, you get in the end zone and we didn't - we lost quite a bit of yardage."
That statement from the Texas head man sure is upsetting quite a few people and it's easy to see why. Sure, in a perfect world if everyone blocked right then it would have been easy for Wisner to find the end zone. However, you're already putting him in a tough spot when you have Ewers in shotgun, then have a pitch come a second later. Ohio State read the play perfectly.
Why not just go to your jumbo package and try to get one yard on the next three downs? Now is probably a good time to bring up Arch Manning, who could have entered the game to try and power his way for six if Sark really wanted to get cute. That pitch play was a joke and him blaming the blocking instead of owning up to his mistake has somehow made things worse.