Steve Sarkisian has endured his fair share of outside criticism since taking over as the head coach of the Texas Longhorns. The doubt persisted last offseason.
College football analyst Tim Brando famously suggested Texas could duplicate Texas A&M’s 2022 season in which the Aggies went 5-7. Others doubted that Sarkisian would ever win 10 games in Austin.
Nearly a year later, those beliefs look as off base and premature as they sounded then. Texas won 12 games, won the Big 12, throttled Alabama on the road and made a College Football Playoff.
One college football analyst thinks the Longhorns can move even higher and into the top tier of the sport with one accomplishment in particular. On3 Sports’ JD PicKell voiced what winning a national title would mean for the Texas football program on his podcast, The Hard Count.
“If they win the national championship and do what I just said they could potentially do with how they would reload on the line of scrimmage defensively and how they could have those weapons translate, we talk about Sark as a great builder.
I think if Texas gets it done this upcoming season and wins it all, I think you put Texas in that Tier 1 category (with Georgia).”
PicKell believes the key to Texas winning a title begins with further development from its quarterback, Quinn Ewers.
“I think the first ingredient is Quinn Ewers staying healthy, something he hasn’t done just yet in Austin. And then you also see him take another massive step as QB1 in Austin. … (In 2023), he threw for 3,400-plus yards, 22 touchdowns, six picks, completed 69% of his passes.”
The On3 Sports college football analyst specified what a national title season looks like for Ewers.
“Now, if you’re going to make the jump to national title kind of quarterback, I think you probably have those numbers somewhere in the range of 3,700, 3,800 yards. I wanna see probably 35 touchdowns. And I wanna see somewhere in the range of five interceptions or less. Keep that completion percentage number about where it is.”
For Ewers, that would mean a 13 touchdown increase from his 2023 campaign. With his four top receiving targets in Adonai Mitchell, Xavier Worthy, Ja’Tavion Sanders and Jordan Whittington all departing, that leaves a high bar for the Longhorns signal caller to reach.
It’s uncertain if Ewers can elevate his game to that level with minimal chemistry between he and his top receiving targets for 2024. If he can, Texas is primed for a title run.