Texas focusing on culture this spring: 'Culture and talent, that's really dangerous'

On Tuesday, Texas football coach Steve Sarkisian had no problem describing what the team's intrasquad scrimmage looked like this past Saturday.

"We have a really competitive practice-slash-scrimmage on Saturday. Physical, a lot of tackling," he said.

As for the scrimmage standouts, Sarkisian noted that running backs Tre Wisner and Jaydon Blue and offensive linemen Kelvin Banks Jr. and Jake Majors had the best days on offense. Defensive backs Jelani McDonald and Jaylon Guilbeau, edge rusher Colin Simmons and linebacker Anthony Hill Jr. were those dudes on defense.

According to Sarkisian, the defense won the overall scrimmage. The offense, however, dominated the red-zone drill at the end.

Getting the little things right, right now

Sarkisian told reporters that he challenged his players and coaches after the scrimmage to find at least one thing to improve on. Attention has also been paid in recent days to building the team's culture.

"In the past as we were building this program, we talked a lot about culture beats talent, and we had to build a really strong culture to beat teams that maybe had a little better talent than we did early on," Sarkisian said. "Now we've assembled a pretty talented football team, but we still need the culture.

"Culture and talent together, that's really dangerous. We don't ever want to sacrifice the team mentality just because we have the talent now, because we're going to need both to try to go win a championship this fall. I think our guys have been very responsive to that."

Taking the program in for a culture tune-up

Those are great points, but a quick follow-up. Is it strange that Sarkisian needs to be giving a pep talk about the team culture as he heads into his fourth season at the school? Shouldn't the culture already be installed within a program that won a Big 12 championship last year and reached the College Football Playoff for the first time?

Not exactly, Sarkisian countered. He isn't necessarily worried about the culture at Texas, but he said he's responsible for its yearly maintenance. He likened these reminders about culture to installing the same offensive and defensive schemes each spring. Sure, a veteran player like sixth-year linebacker David Gbenda knows the fundamentals of coverage calls, but some of his new teammates may not.

"I feel like we exhausted ourselves on building our culture over the last two years to really build this thing the way we wanted it to," Sarkisian said. "I think one thing as coaches, the mistake we can make is we got it. I talked about (this) early on in January, complacency is the devil. If I get complacent, like hey, our culture is just great and I neglect it, sooner or later, it will start to deteriorate.

"I just want to stay on point with that stuff so that they understand the value of it because a lot of these guys weren't here when we built that culture," Sarkisian continued. "So we have to go back to square one and rebuild it over again because every team takes on a personality of its own. We've got to make sure that we've got really quality leadership, we've got to make sure the younger players are buying into the ideas of our culture and why they're important so they can understand that. And so that takes time."

Sarkisian tips his cap to other coaches

Sarkisian didn't just discuss Saturday's scrimmage and the team culture during his 22-minute availability. He even ventured into different sports.

To begin his press conference, he applauded the work of Texas coach Mike White and the UT softball program for their series win over Oklahoma this past weekend. "Just another example of Texas athletics and all the success that we're having in every sport. ... He's got a great team and fired up for them," Sarkisian said.

Sarkisian also was asked if he had picked up any coaching tips from Dawn Staley and Dan Hurley during the NCAA basketball tournaments. Staley and the South Carolina women wrapped up an undefeated season by beating Iowa for the women's title Sunday. The Hurley-coached men from UConn had their one shining moment and successfully defended the NCAA championship they won last year with a 15-point win over Purdue on Monday.

"The first (thing you notice about Staley and Hurley) is they coach hard," Sarkisian said." There's not for a second you watch their interaction with their players where they're not coaching them hard and they're demanding of their players, but you can also feel the love coming from them with their players. And two, they're both very confident and their teams play very confidently because there's a belief that's been instilled in them."

This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Steve Sarkisian discusses scrimmage, Texas culture, coaching peers