AUSTIN (KXAN) — If college football had “dog days” of training camp, it would be right now. You’re far enough away from the start of camp that excitement has worn off and it’s not quite time to start game planning for Week 1, so it’s a weird in-between period where things could potentially get stale and focus can waver.
That’s not the case with this year’s Texas Longhorns, head coach Steve Sarkisian said Monday. He said that’s a direct reflection of the team’s leadership.
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“(Monday’s) practice was as good of a practice that we’ve had that I can remember in quite some time,” he said. “Both sides did some really good things and it was a fun practice as a coach. We’re not quite into game plan mode, but the leadership of our guys has been tremendous, and that’s been the trickle-down effect to younger players.”
Coming off the first scrimmage of training camp Saturday, Sarkisian said there was the typical sloppiness with false starts and other presnap penalties, but those are fixable mistakes. He said the coaching staff “coached them hard” and were demanding, but the players responded well.
“It was highly competitive,” Sarkisian said of the scrimmage. “We have a bunch of stuff we have to clean up, but I was impressed with how coachable they were. We wanted to get things fixed and they responded with a lot of intensity and energy.”
Two position groups Sarkisian has talked about all training camp have been the receivers and the defensive front. He said the scrimmage provided more clarity how those groups could look moving forward, but specifically with the receivers, third-year starting quarterback Quinn Ewers is building rapport with all of them.
“Naturally, Quinn’s understanding schematically of what we’re doing is helpful because he’s almost an extension of us on the field,” Sarkisian said. “He can talk through things with the receivers based on a coverage, how he would like it to go and where they need to be. He’s more comfortable doing those types of things now.”
Having the luxury of depth, being able to rotate different players in with the first-team offense and not seeing a drop-off in production, is something Sarkisian mentions every time he speaks about the team. Ewers is building chemistry and getting good reps with at least six receivers and all three of the tight ends — Gunnar Helm, Amari Niblack and Juan Davis — Sarkisian said.
With sophomore running back CJ Baxter out for the season with a knee injury, Saturday’s scrimmage also served as an inventory of sorts. He floated the idea of potentially moving someone to running back to help with depth, but he wanted to see how the original group performed before moving forward with that. He said junior Colin Page, a walk-on from Anderson High School in Austin, stood out running the ball and on special teams among others.
Jaydon Blue and Tre Wisner predictably had good scrimmages, and while Sarkisian generally liked what he saw from freshmen Christian Clark and Jerrick Gibson, they both “got their introduction to college football a little bit.”
“Jaydon had to go up and remind them of his first scrimmage, and CJ did that, too,” Sarkisian said. “They also did some really good things, too. They are definitely further down the road than some would think and we’ve been impressed with them.”