Yes, this one's on Steve Sarkisian, and no, "inexcusable" is not too strong a word for how he's handled the aftermath of the No. 1 team's win over Oklahoma.
Rivalry games are chaos. Oklahoma is a genuinely good football team that Texas was never going to steamroll. The Red River Rivalry, played at the Cotton Bowl in the middle of the State Fair, has never cared about rankings or point spreads, and anyone who tells you a single Saturday in Dallas settles a coach's reputation is selling something. All of that is true.
None of it gets Sarkisian off the hook. Texas sat at No. 1 in the country, and the margin should have been more decisive than it was. A rivalry game like this is the exact situation a head coach is paid to tilt as far in his team's favor as possible. You control the margins, you keep your offense ahead of the chains. Sarkisian had the better roster and still left room to tighten.
That's the recurring complaint about him, and it keeps showing up because it keeps being right. The offense is too clever for its own good. It reaches for the layered, exotic call when the simple, physical one would do, and when the game tightens, the identity disappears. A coach who also calls the plays owns both halves of that problem, and Sarkisian owns both halves here.
Then came his week, and it didn't help his case. He said he'll keep calling the plays and isn't considering staff changes. He went out of his way to defend Arch Manning, floating the idea that the "Manning" name is drawing outsized criticism. Shielding your quarterback is a fine instinct. But it also means he dodged his own responsibility for the shortcomings his play sheet produced.
The people blaming Arch Manning have it backwards. He didn't design the game plan, and he didn't decide what to call on third down. Sarkisian did both. If you want to be furious about this, be furious at the guy holding the laminated card.
Texas still won. What should worry Longhorns fans is a coaching failure papered over by the final score.
