Steve Sarkisian Addresses Texas Longhorns Punter Situation

AUSTIN -- Hidden among all of the struggles that the Texas Longhorns had in the 30-15 loss to the Georgia Bulldogs last week was the issues the team had in the punting game.

With starting punter Michael Kern still recovering from injury, Ian Ratliff took over punting duties for the second straight game. He was solid in the 34-3 win over Oklahoma on three punts but some poor kicks against Georgia made things a bit easier for a Bulldogs offense that had its troubles against Texas' defense.

Texas head coach Steve Sarkisian said that he's hopeful Kern will be back for Saturday's meeting with No. 25 Vanderbilt. In a game that could have limited possession due to the Commodores' style of offense, Kern's leg could be key.

"We're hopeful Michael will be ready to go," Sarkisian said Thursday. "I thought he has had a couple good practices in a row. But again, we'll get to game day and assess them both, kind of on the field, and decide who will go with there."

While Texas' turnover problems played the biggest part in giving Georgia short fields on offense, two of Ratliff's punts essentialy handed the Bulldogs a pair of field goals. This ultimately played a difference in how the Longhorns approached their second-half comeback attempt.

Punting from the Texas one-yard line with 13:29 to play in the second quarter, Ratliff's punt didn't make it past midfield, as was low enough to allow Anthony Evans III to return it 19 yards to the Longhorns 13-yard. The Bulldogs gained just 13 yards on the drive across seven plays but kicker Peyton Woodring had already been set up for an easy field goal.

Two drives later, Ratliff's punt from the Texas 21-yard line travelled just 36 yards and allowed Georgia to start right near midfield. A seven-play, 25-yard drive ended in a 48-yard field goal.

Overall, the Texas special teams hasn't had the same explosiveness it did last season, something Sarkisian is hoping will change as SEC play treads on.

"I think special teams, we've gotten so much notoriety for how aggressive we've been in the explosive plays. It's back to back weeks we had big returns," Sarkisian said. "We had the big one against OU with Silas in the punt return game. We had the long one with (Matthew Golden) last week that call got called back with the holding penalty. We just haven't had a lot of opportunities in the field goal game for Bert, I think Will Stone has kicked off tremendously. I think we've only had eight kickoff returns total in seven games that people have brought back against us, and we're covering kicks really well. So again, we haven't quite gotten the splash plays, the blocked punts, the blocked field goals or those those touchdown returns, but I think we're very close, and we're continuing to work at it and looking forward to kind of the second half of the season of that becoming a really impactful phase for our team."