Campbell-Williams Field featured enough laundry on it during Saturday’s 38-7 win by the No. 7 Texas Longhorns over the San Jose State Spartans that the burnt orange faithful at Darrell K Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium might have confused it for a laundromat — in committing 12 penalties for 115 yards, the Longhorns played a sloppy brand of football.
So expect those penalties to make plenty of appearances in the bad and ugly sections of head coach Steve Sarkisian’s weekly “Good, Bad, and Ugly” presentation
to his team on Monday morning.
“My foot’s got to get in their butt here on Monday morning, like, that’s unacceptable, and there’s a standard with which we want to play the game, and 12 penalties does not meet that standard,” Sarkisian said.
Offensively, the eight penalties for 70 yards contributed to numerous stalled drives and six punts by redshirt senior Jack Bouwmeester.
“We had holding penalties on the perimeter and at the line of scrimmage, we had false-start penalties, and so it’s kind of like two steps forward, one step back. It’s hard to find rhythm and consistency as an offense when you play that way,” Sarkisian said.
The penalties started early for Texas — on the first play from scrimmage, a holding penalty on redshirt freshman wide receiver Parker Livingstone cost the Horns 17 yards of field position after junior wide receiver DeAndre Moore Jr. gained 23 yards on the push pass.
Later in the game, a chop block on senior center Cole Hutson negated a touchdown and pushed the Horns back to the edge of the red zone, a holding penalty on senior guard DJ Campbell took away a 34-yard gain by Livingstone, and an illegal block in the back penalty on redshirt freshman wide receiver Aaron Butler cost Livingstone 10 yards at the end of a 42-yard reception.
In the fourth quarter, Texas was flagged for holding, an illegal shift, a false start, and an illegal substitution.
Defensively, Texas sophomore edge Colin Simmons was flagged for two more penalties after committing two penalties against Ohio State, an offside penalty and a roughing the passer penalty that Sarkisian believes are a result of Simmons pressing too much.
“It’s like anything — you go into a season, you have high expectations of being the player that you want to become, and when things don’t start going your way, you can press. I feel like he’s pressed a little bit at times, and we just need him to settle down and play within his ability, play within the structure the defense, and the plays are going to come for him,” Sarkisian said.
Ultimately, the penalties reflected mistakes in each phase, including a roughing the kicker penalty on redshirt senior safety Micheal Taaffe that extended a San Jose State drive instead of giving the offense a short field.
“It was a variety of things, and so to me that’s part of our mental intensity and our focus as a team to do things the right way. We had holdings on the perimeter. We had holdings on the interior line. We had a roughing the passer. We jumped off sides on defense. And so it was kind of across the board,” Sarkisian said.
Against an overmatched opponent in San Jose State, the sloppiness and lack of discipline didn’t have an impact on the outcome, but that will change in SEC play if Texas can’t manage cleaner football.
