Sark is ultimately responsible and the buck stops with him. I will say, there were a lot of factors that led to 5-7 last year and not all of it was because of Sark. A few bullet point below that I feel definitely impacted this team.
1. This coaching staff basically met this team and did their install through zoom meetings. I do feel that this in some form had an impact whether you want to call it relationship building or trust. Not being in your normal facilities and meeting rooms does have an impact when you're a new coaching staff coming in. This is not an excuse for the performance on the field, but I do understand it can have an impact.
2. The talent level on this roster was piss poor. Worthy as a true freshman in summer practice was out performing our entire WR room. This speaks about Worthy's talent but also speaks about the absolutely piss poor WR development by Andre Coleman and Herman. Sark had the opportunity to tell Coleman to get lost but kept him on board. That's his fault. I will say, he saw his fault and was able to get one of the best WR coaches in the country to come in. Marion has had a huge impact from a recruiting and developmental stand point.
3. This team severely lacked leadership last year. Casey Thompson was anything but a leader. The guy cared more about where he was on the depth chart than the team. Card on the other seems to be about the most boring, uninspiring teammate I've seen in a while. The guy shits his pants. Us as fans see during game days. The team sees it on a daily basis. There is a reason the players were tweeting about Ewers the minute he committed to Texas. Our veteran players were Casey Thompson, Derek Kerstteter, Coburn, BJ Foster, Josh Tompson last year. Half those guys barely put effort during actual games let alone practices. BJ Foster has quit the team during a fucking game. Hell we all saw him quit in the middle of plays multiple times. Not much you can do as coaches when you don't have anyone able to take his spot,
4. I saw open WRs and QBs in clean pockets unable to deliver throws and/or catch passes. I can think of 3 crucial drops in the Arkansas game alone where a WR was wide fucking open for a TD. Either the WR dropped the ball or the QB completely missed the throw. Not sure what Sark is supposed to do in this instance other than upgrade the talent. I'm not here to make excuses for PK bc that was the worst defense I've seen Texas toss out there. With that said, I saw Jerrin Thompson miss 1 on 1 tackles repeatedly while being the right position. I saw our DBs and safeties miss PBUs and interceptions regardless of being in the right position. I saw Schooler drop atleast 3 interceptions last year. At some point, these guys have to make the plays.
Things that I fully blame the coaches for:
1. Sark assembled a defensive staff backwards. He should hired his DC first and then bring in assistant coaches the DC can work with. I fully believe the defensive coaching staff is not on the same page. You can see it from on the field. The DBs and front 7 are never on the same page.
2. Half time adjustments. This coaching staff had no clue how to adjust once the opponents were able to make adjustments to our game plan. This needs to change this year or we will lose more 2nd half leads.
3. Not utilizing the portal to bring in more OL last year. This staff believed a bit too much in their ability to develop this shit talent Herman left. Part of being a good coach is understanding your own limitations.
With all the above, I'm not sure Sark could have had a better offseason. We hired him and he needs more than 1 year to objectively assess his time here. While he hasn't proven shit yet, I'm not sure what else you would want from portal and recruiting stand point. We locked up Patterson to help on defense. Brought in a smart LB in DTD to move Overshown to help in space and pass rush. They upgraded at CB with Watts and focusing on improving man coverage. The offensive talent is the best we've seen on the 40 in quite some time. He was able to get this talent in 1 offseason. Props to him, I've seen every other coach here fail at doing that. Now it's time to perform. If he wins less than 8 games this year, then he's going to get fired after his 3rd year. I do think we will see this team win 9 games. There's just too much talent on offense and I've seen Sark spectacularly get gets wide open time and time again.