BONUS: Do Ohio State & Texas Need To Treat This Weekend As Must-Win?

0:00We are back with another bonus show. In this time, you're going to get to hear from Texas head coach Steve Sarkeesian. He held his press conference earlier this week, previewing the match up between the number one buckais and number four long horns. Had a lot of interesting things to say. He comes across as very likable in these press conferences. We talked to him at the Cotton Bowl a couple of years ago. He is very energetic. Seems pretty relaxed going into this one. I think you guys will enjoy hearing from Sark this week. So we're going to give you three separate shows. One sort of a general overall look at the game. One specifically in the offense. One on the defense and some other things. So let's start with sort of the general overall thing and we're going to get real, real general to start with. This was just his opening statement. Kind of looking back at their 59-7 win over Texas state and it sort of brief synopsis of his views on Ohio State. Quick recap from Saturday's ball game. I think first of all, I'd be remiss if I didn't thank our fans. What an amazing turnout.

1:00Under those conditions, where I think we were 105 heat index on the field, the field reached 160 degrees for our players. But you looked in that stadium at the opening kickoff and just the atmosphere, the energy was really awesome. So thank you all, Longhorn Nation for your support. I know I don't need to be asking for you this Saturday night. I know we'll be there ready to rock and roll so it should be a fun night for everybody that way. I think coming out of the game, we talked about, you know, fit playing 52 guys in the first half. I thought it was huge. We played upwards into the 70s for the total of the ball game. A lot of guys played, a lot of guys got opportunities, a lot of guys got touches. I know that some of this is redundant. But man, you think about the five turnovers, essentially, we created defensively in a variety of ways, right, with piles with the punch out, Grayson, Scupin and Scorrin. Maraud Watson, you know, with the force fumble, Colin, with a great job on the recovery,

2:04the interception by piles, the two, four down stops. But all those, you know, that's 35 points in a game. And that's playing complimentary football. I know you all have heard me say that before of playing complimentary football, working together. And I thought offensively, you know, the third down efficiency was really good. You know, I think arch was like six to seven on third down, something like that, the short yardage offense. That's how you're able to extend drives. And then when we didn't, there was some that were intentional, you know, going two for two on fourth down. So I guess it's always a good day when you don't punt. You know, it'd been nice to get Mac out there. I get, and I know that sounds crazy to say. And that was part of why, you know, we put G out there to kick that field goal just so he can, you know, make a field goal in DKR as we start to move forward. But all at all, you know, it was a good win for us. It was a good start to the season. But we also know the challenge that we have this week, Ohio State, their number one in the country for a reason. Ryan has done a tremendous job with that program since taken over, obviously national champs

3:07a couple of years ago. Brought in Matt Patricia last season, led the country in just about every defensive statistical category. And this year he brings in Arthur Smith. So it's a nice luxury to have. Having two NFL head coaches on your staff as your play callers. And they've reloaded, you know, they're extremely talented. I think we all know who Jeremiah Smith is, offensively, but Julian Sands, the heck of a player, you know, Bo Jackson run in the ball, they got a veteran O line. They've added some receivers to the mix, losing car and L Tate. And then defensively, they've reloaded as well. You know, they've got some really good players and some guys that have grown up, you know, McLean, Matthews, those guys, you know, Pierce. But also the addition of an Allegro, the addition of a John Walker, they still have Kenyatta Jackson. They still have Devon Sanchez. So this is a very, very talented football team that's well coached. But these are the games that you love to be part of, you know. And we're fortunate that we get to be part of these games as a staff, as players, as a

4:11fan base. We're obviously looking forward to the opportunity should be heck of a week. This is a top five matchup. This is going to be one of the most watched games of the entire college football season. But at the same time, the team that loses, they're not out of the college football playoff. They just, it's a little bit of a dent in the resume and that's about it. So can you kind of treat this just as another game or do you have to treat this as a big game knowing how much a win could impact your playoff resume? I don't think I need to really like spend so much energy and time on what does this game mean, right? I think as a competitor, it's like, hey, we get an opportunity to play with them one team in the country. A team we've had two battles with the last two years. And we know what that takes. I'm not so consumed with what the end result might be, you know, four months down the road. We've got other games to go play that can contribute one way or the other to our success

5:13that we have in the season. What I am excited about is as a competitor and for our team, the locker room and building full of competitors that we have is that we get an opportunity to go against the best. And how are we going to perform against the best? And because our best is going to be needed and our best is going to be needed for four quarters. And so that's what excites me. Like I said, I'm not so consumed with what could be down the road. We've got 10 other games to go play that'll contribute to that. This is about the life of a competitor and putting yourself in the arena and performing under what would what would deem stressful conditions, right? Because if you're wrong, they can hurt you. But if we're right, we can hurt them. And so that's the exciting part of preparing for that at DKR in front of our crowd. With I bet there's close to 20 million people that watch this game. And so that's pretty cool when you think about that way. This is a big game in all the ways a game can be a big game.

6:16College game days going to be there. National TV broadcast. Going to be one of the most watched games of the season. Lots of fans, lots of celebrities coming into town. Is there any concern around all the pomp and circumstance around this game? Maybe creating some distractions with long horns? I think it's great for our game. I'll say this, like the fact that we have college game day coming back to Austin, that's great. The fact that we'll have, whether it's the Spurs team, the Rockets team, how many ever people on our sideline there? That's great because these are two great teams that are going to battle and going to compete against one another. It's awesome for the university. It's awesome for the city of Austin. It's awesome for college football. This will be the most watched regular season game, arguably of all time in the regular season. That's great for everybody else for us. What are we doing today? How are we preparing today? That's been the message to our team.

7:17Today is the most important day. We need to focus on the task at hand and we need to be enamored with us because I think this week can be full of distractions if you allow them to be distractions. Focus is a very powerful thing. We use a very simple adage. Starve our distractions, feed our focus. If we do that, we'll put our best foot forward and play the best game that we're capable of playing. All that stuff is really good for the game. It's really good for everything else for us. It's about our prep work and about our preparation mentally, physically and emotionally. Is there any kind of a change in approach for Texas? From last year's game, because last year was week one and it was on the road this year, week two at home. Does that change how they're approaching this game? I don't feel like going into last week's game that we weren't in the right frame of mind to compete at the highest level in a very tough environment on the road. I felt like we came to battle and we did battle. Unfortunately, we didn't score a couple of times.

8:17We were inside the five-yard line, ten-yard line. Maybe that's a different game. I think from mentality standpoint, how we approach things, we've always got a little bit of a theme for different games. How we approach it and our process to get ready to play won't change. We believe in our process. We've been very efficient in that. We've won a lot of big games. I think this is 2022. We've won more top 25 games than any other team in the country. We've been used to playing in big games. We haven't won them all. For the most part, we perform pretty well. We feel like our form that for success is one that is kind of wasted the test of time. This is kind of a different kind of question. He was asked, Sarc as a college football fan, not just a college football coach, but a college football fan loves the game and was asked about three things from the opening weekend, Notre Dame's uniforms, the Ole Miss, Louisville game, and the finish of the Michigan game. Get a little popery from Sarc on some of his thoughts on the opening week of college football. Wow, that was a lot going on there.

9:20I didn't get to see the Notre Dame game as much, but they were blue. I saw the uniforms. The Ole Miss game is a hell of a game. That was a hell of a game and two quarterbacks that were making plays in that fourth quarter of that game. That's what college football, like you love that. We're sitting around on a Sunday night and college footballs at the forefront and everybody's watching those two teams compete. That was a hell of a game. I didn't see the Michigan play in real time. I saw the aftermath watching different sports shows and reading about it. I was curious and I still don't understand or get the final ruling of it all. Unfortunate for Western Michigan to play their tails off the way they did and to lose like that. I lost a game that way before on a Hail Mary and that definitely sucks.

10:25That's why you play 60 minutes. But I don't know the exact ruling on the timing. I know there was a player out of bounds. Touch the ball first. Is there one second? Is there not the clock in the stadium, the clock back in the big ten set. There's a lot of moving parts that I'm not going to pretend to know everything about. But wow, what a finish. My biggest thing was like I was shocked. They stormed the field. That was probably a surprise. Is there a little bit of a different dynamic to this non-conference game than there would be for a typical one? Because a lot of times non-conference games, these are teams that haven't played. There's really not much overlap between the coaching staffs or the rosters. In this case, Ohio State's played Texas. This is the third year in a row that they're going to play Texas. That's more than they play most big ten teams. So is there a little bit of a different dynamic having played twice in the last two years? Yeah, I think that it lends to strategy. I think it lends itself to style of play.

11:29I think it lends itself to, as I said, the life of a competitor and to your point. We've had some great success against really good teams over the past two, three years. We've had not so good success against other teams. Well, you got to do a deep dive. Why is that? And where can we make those subtle adjustments to continue to try to improve to play better against certain teams and continue to play well against other teams? I don't think it's a rinse repeat. And I think that's a mistake you can make is that, hey, we're good against this team. Let's just do the same thing again. Because there's really good coaches that we coach against. And they're making adjustments, too. They're making adjustments to their roster to try to be better against us or to continue to prove against us. We're making adjustments to schemes. And so you have to adapt. You have to continue to evolve and you have to try to do what we think is in the best interest moving forward for specific opponents as we go. All right. There you go. A little bit from Sark. Hope you guys enjoyed that. We are going to have so much more coverage all week long at Bukai Insiders.com and at

12:32youtube.com slash at Bukai Insiders. Got some shows coming up this week with our scheme insiders. Ross Fulton and Michael Pettit. Ross did a show on the Ohio State offense recapping their first week. Michael Pettit doing a show on the Ohio State defense recapping the first week. Ross also did a show. We had some questions from members on our board. People wanted to hear more from Ross about the Texas defense and your defense coordinator Will Must champ. You can find that show as well on our YouTube channel youtube.com slash at Bukai Insiders. If you find a video you like, here's one thing we're going to ask you to do. Yeah, you hit the thumbs up. Leave us a comment. We appreciate both of those things. Go find that video on your mobile device and use the hype feature. That seems to make a big difference on our end. We appreciate your support. The more views we get, the more videos we do. You want to help us out a little bit. You can use that hype feature on your mobile device to help folks find the videos that you like the best. That means we're going to want to do more of those kinds of videos.

13:33So there you can do that and to help us out. You can also join us at Bukai Insiders.com. We've got our whole team covering the Bukai team. The Bukai is recruiting. Just got a commitment this week covering Bukai scheme. You've heard a bunch about those shows covering Bukai basketball. Plus a really, really fun community. We got a live event planned in Austin on Friday evening. We would love to see you there. But if you want to be there, you got to be a member of Bukai Insiders.com. That'll do it for now. Thank you guys for joining us. We'll be back with another show very soon.