The Longhorns kicked off camp in near 100-degree heat, nothing out of the ordinary for late July in Central Texas, and Sarkisian said several position groups have an overflow of quality players.
AUSTIN (KXAN) — Depth is critical to success in college football, and when speaking after the first preseason training camp practice, Texas coach Steve Sarkisian said this team might be the deepest he's ever had.
The Longhorns kicked off camp in near 100-degree heat, nothing out of the ordinary for late July in Central Texas, and Sarkisian said several position groups have an overflow of quality players.
"I feel like I'm crying from a yacht right now," he said. "That's a good problem. Do we have too many good players? What are we saying? That's the idea of trying to recruit well, recruiting players with high character that work really hard. I hope they make it really difficult on us."
All three phases — offense, defense and special teams — have positions filled with talent. As Sarkisian was rattling them off, he mentioned two spots that had tremendous top-flight players last season, interior defensive line and wide receiver. Byron Murphy II and T'Vondre Sweat went early in the NFL Draft from the defensive line while wideouts Xavier Worth, Adonai Mitchell and Jordan Whittington were also selected, but this year, Sarkisian said the quality is spread out between more guys.
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Particularly at wide receiver, which also factors into the kick return game on special teams, the confluence of transfers and the younger generation is apparent. Transfers Isaiah Bond, Matthew Golden and Silas Bolden, along with Johntay Cook were guys Sarkisian mentioned as early candidates tor return kicks and punts. He said he also loved Jaydon Blue and DeAndre Moore returning kicks last season, so his philosophy is going to be week-by-week and whoever will provide the best matchup.
"They're all a little bit different, and some of it might be predicated on the type of punter that we're playing," he said. "We're trying to groom them all and then figure out who we feel most confident in and reliable in what we're asking to do in that gameplan."
Sarkisian said "we're gonna go hard for the first two and a half weeks," while also saying how they'll vary practice times to give the players breaks from the scorching heat. On that same token, however, he said the guys have to get used the heat because that's what football is played in during late August and early September.
"We're going to have to deal with those elements," Sarkisian said about the heat. "We need them to be a strength of ours, so as we work through the early portion of camp, we have to do better than just get acclimated to the heat. We have to embrace it and perform at a high level."
The team began practice around 2:45 p.m. Wednesday but will have practices at night and early morning throughout camp. They'll have Saturday scrimmages to get a look at game-like situations to see who performs the best and have a "pretty good idea" of what the Week 1 depth chart will be after the second one.
The team will taper off in the two weeks before the season opener Aug. 31 against Colorado State.
Sarkisian said preseason training camp tests a player's mental fortitude just as much as physical ability.
"It's a mindset," he said. "We believe in the toughness of our program and we have to push them to places where maybe they think they couldn't go, and then excel in those places."
Sports have come a long way when it comes to gathering information and the methods of application, and Sarkisian is a big believer in data. He said they altered the model of training camp last season with the help of new information and plan on doing the same thing this season.
"It's more of a ramp-up model they use in the NFL," he said. "We don't go quite as many reps and we build toward what we want to be in practices five, six or seven. The first half of practice we were outside and the second half we were in the bubble. We're definitely doing some things that science tells us are the right things to do. Our group does a great job of providing that information, explaining it to me and then trying to make the best decision for our players."
They'll be back to morning practices the last two weeks of camp as they prepare for Colorado State, he said.
New to college football this season is the option to have one-way headset-to-helmet communication with players on the field as the NFL has done for years. Those players with the green dots on their helmets are designated listeners to the coach and have speakers installed in their lids to relay plays in.
Sarkisian said they used it on offense and defense during Wednesday's practice, saying multiple guys had the honor of listening for play call information.
"That's going to be a work in progress," he said regarding who ends up being the "green dot" player on defense. "We've talked to a lot of different teams around the country, teams in the NFL ... and then it's the type of offense you're playing."
He said Colorado State will run an air raid offense that throws it around a bunch while Michigan might come at teams with seven or eight offensive linemen and try to smash it down your throat. The player who gets the green dot will be based, at least partially, on that, Sarkisian said.
