Steve Sarkisian: Game-planning is science, play-calling is art
After painting a Rembrandt on the canvas of Campbell-Williams Field on Saturday, Steve Sarkisian broke down the process of melding game-planning with play-calling.
ZACH BARNETT 3 HOURS AGO
Steve Sarkisian painted a Rembrandt on Saturday.
In demolishing Florida 49-17, Texas rolled up 562 yards of offense on 64 plays, but that doesn't tell the full story. Twelve of UT's first 42 snaps gained at least 20 yards (and one more went for 19), including these beauties:
After struggling through three games in his return from a September oblique injury, Quinn Ewers went 19-of-27 for 333 yards with a career-high five touchdowns in a 32-point demolition that wasn't as close as the final margin.
Sark has authored some clunkers over his career and even this season (see the 0-point first half vs. Georgia on Oct. 19), but when he's in his bag, there are few better at hitting it where they ain't than him.
On Monday, Sarkisian broke down the process of melding the science of game-planning with the art of play-calling.
"Putting a game plan together is very analytical. You can call it mathematical and scientific in that way. I like to think calling a game is a little bit more of art. It's a little bit more of a blank canvas," he said.
"I could hand you guys the call sheet and I could tell you it's 3rd-and-6, and you'd look, there's five or six calls at 3rd-and-6 and (you'd) just pick one of them. You could kind of follow the script to some degree and it might go well, it might not. You don't know."
In studying the best in the business across a now-25-year career, Sarkisian said the best play-callers have to be willing to do three things when the calm of a Monday film study meets the chaos of 3rd-and-6.
"You have to have the willingness to adjust, you have to be willing to take calculated risks, and you have to trust your players," he said. "When you do that, sometimes you say, we were going to take five or six shots in this game but predicated on the way the defense is playing, we have to scale that back and play a different style. Some games you go into thinking, we're not going to get a lot of shot opportunities and how they're playing you and how the offense is performing, you may take two or three more shots.
Finally, there's one last box an offensive coordinator has to check to become a Picasso of the play sheet, Sarkisian said: "You've got to make sure the players understand the whys of why you've called certain things as you go."
Sarkisian and AP No. 3 Texas will hope to paint another classic this Saturday at Arkansas (noon ET, ABC).