In search of a solution, Texas Longhorns HC Steve Sarkisian has a clear message for his team

The run game was awful and Texas must figure it out.

"We have to figure that out. I don't have a great answer for you today, Joe. What I do know is we couldn't run it tonight when they didn't know we were going to run it, regardless of when they knew we were going to run it. And so we've got to improve that. You know, we just cannot be a one-dimensional team.

"When guys can just start rushing the passer and not worrying about the run, the game gets really difficult. So we got to find a way to generate some run game and generate some run game outside Arch. We got to find it with the runners. And that'll be a task of ours tonight, tomorrow, Monday, to put together a plan for next week."

Outside of the offense, the defensive struggles might be more glaring.

"The one that really stood out to me was the kind of the deep post they hit, I think to (Vernell Brown III). Want to say that was in the third quarter, where we felt like he looked left, he looked right, looked left, looked back right, and we just didn't get a pass rush. But I think to their credit they ran the ball enough to where we had to play run defense, and then when they were calling their passes, we weren't really in straight pass-rush mode.

"You know, we got home, we hit the arm and forced the interception there for (Michael) Taaffe with a pass rush. But we have to find a way to make opponents one-dimensional, and we weren't able to do that tonight. They were able to run the ball and win on early downs, especially early in the game, and that opened up their entire playbook to him."

This has been a problem for Texas despite being highly-ranked in several defensive categories. The run defense has been excellent until Saturday. And the experienced secondary has had a ton of success. Then Saturday happened. This is a major issue for Sark's team and must be addressed quickly with Oklahoma on tap next week.

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