Finding the secret sauce to anything is a lot like finding Bigfoot. The best you usually come up with is a grainy photo and a bad story... unless it’s the secret Big Mac sauce. That is just Thousand Island dressing.
But when it comes to playing football in the SEC, everyone from professional pundits to armchair quarterbacks has had a take on the hidden ingredients it takes to win in the toughest and most successful conference in college football. Defense? Speed? Dominant run game? Heisman Trophy winning QB?
Texas Longhorns head coach, and one-time SEC offensive coordinator under Nick Saban, Steve Sarkisian believes he has found the key, and in an in-depth interview with ESPN’s Greg McElroy he laid out the surprising answer: depth.
Sarkisian explains that while in some college football conferences (no offense intended, Big 12), you might circle one or two games as being especially tough, maybe an early season game or an eventual playoff game. In the SEC however, those types of games come week in and week out. And the secret to being able to survive that kind of season, not to mention a now expanded College Football Playoff, is to be two to three quality players deep at all positions.
“That’s really where the emphasis has gone to," Sarkisian said. "To make sure that the quality of our roster isn’t just top heavy.”
To emphasize the point, Sarkisian highlighted the way Texas beefed up their defensive line in the transfer portal, bringing in defensive tackle Tia Savea and defensive lineman Bill Norton, both from Arizona, and flipping Louisville Cardinals defensive lineman Jermayne Lole from their longtime rival Oklahoma Sooners. These additions were key to giving Sarkisian and the Longhorns enough bodies to bolster a unit that was a strength of the 2023 team and ranked third nationally in run defense.
Of course, it will help Sarkisian that he does have a veteran quarterback in a Heisman frontrunner, Quinn Ewers, returning to lead the 2024 campaign. But the answer to whether or not he’s built the depth he says he needs to battle through a brutal SEC schedule, including the monster matchup with the Georgia Bulldogs on Oct. 19, won’t be clear until the season’s end.
Sarkisian and the Longhorns hope and believe they have what it takes to hoist a national championship trophy in their inaugural season in the SEC.
Depth will be the essential ingredient.
