Why Doesn't Texas Run Popular Air Raid, Up-Tempo Offense? Steve Sarkisian Explains

The Longhorns HC went in-depth on his history with the air raid offense and more on season two of the Lawyers and Longhorns series on YouTube.

Texas Longhorns hey football coach, Steve Sarkisian during the first day with pads in fall football camp practice for the Texas Longhorns at Denius Fields on Monday, August 5, 2024. / Ricardo B. Brazziell/American-Statesman / USA TODAY NETWORK

Before Steve Sarkisian put on a headset on the sidelines, he was putting on a helmet as the starting quarterback at BYU.

And for those two years Sarkisian was at BYU from between 1995-1996, he threw the ball a lot, having 7,758 yards and 55 touchdowns to his college career.

"Really what that offense was... that was the air raid offense that we were running at BYU," said Sarkisian on season two of Lawyers and Longhorns on YouTube.

The air raid was most popular with the late Mike Leach, who helped create the offense in the late 1980s and early 1990s with Hal Mumme over at Iowa Wesleyan College. It was first officially used at the FBS level with Kentucky in 1997 when Leach became the offensive coordinator for the Wildcats.

After Sarkisian graduated and got into his coaching career, the air raid was just getting started and was growing in popularity year after year. Sarkisian even mentioned in the interview how he would talk a lot with Mike Leach about the playstyle while Sark was at Washington and Leach was at Washington State.

The air raid today is now a very popular offensive scheme used by head coaches like USC, Clemson, TCU, Oklahoma, and others - including the Horns' next opponent, Colorado State.

But Sarkisian refuses to use it at Texas. And he has good reason to.

"The air raid has never won a championship," Sarkisian said. "I try to tend to lean into what are the things that are proven that have withstood the test of time, and there is definitely a style, a pro-style of offense, that has historically proven to be successful."

Not to mention, Texas's offense has performed just fine under Sarkisian's three years here without the air raid. Texas was second in the Big 12 for points per game at 35.7 in 2023.

There is always room for improvement, however. For instance, Texas had struggles scoring in the red zone, where they only scored on 31 out of 61 situations, and ranked 89th nationally for red zone efficiency in 2023, which was bottom 20 for power five schools.

Sarkisian has even thought about adding more up-tempo to their offense which was not common for Texas to use in 2023.

"There's been years where I totally committed to (up-tempo offense)," Sarkisian said. "There's been years when I went as fast as we can go because I didn't think we were that good on the o-line and it was successful."

Jul 17, 2024; Dallas, TX, USA; Texas head coach Steve Sarkisian speaking at Omni Dallas Hotel. Mandatory Credit: Brett Patzke-USA TODAY Sports / Brett Patzke-USA TODAY Sports

But ultimately, Sarkisian thinks up-tempo could possibly hurt the offense more than help.

"At the end of games, when you're trying to shorten the game and shrink possessions, it's hard for those teams to go back (into a normal-paced offense)," Sarkisian said. "The winning percentages just aren't as good."

Sarkisian is entering an interesting and critical year for his offense. The receiving room has been almost completely replaced and will need to find ways to be as good as the receiving room from last year that featured multiple NFL players.

"Every year, I like to say that we try to recreate ourselves," Sarkisian said. "We have a system, but we still try to recreate ourselves to what's in the best interest of the team we have now."

Texas will open up the year tomorrow against Colorado State at 2:30 at Darrell K. Royal Stadium.