AUSTIN, Texas — Steve Sarkisian enters his fifth season as head coach at Texas with the program facing big expectations after reaching the semifinals of the College Football Playoff in consecutive years.

The Arch Manning era has officially arrived in Austin, as he’ll be the Longhorns’ full-time starting quarterback this fall. Manning is humble enough that he has won over the locker room and self-assured enough that he’ll occasionally wink at Sarkisian after a good play in practice.

“Almost like, ‘Did you like that?'” Sarkisian chuckled about the winks.

With Texas headed into its second season in the SEC, there is a stout roster, strong returning cores on both sides of the ball and the reality of playoff expectations hovering again. There’s also a defense that’s experienced and explosive enough that Sarkisian says, “I don’t think Arch is ever going to have to go into a game thinking we have to outscore ’em.”

We’ll know right away with the Longhorns traveling to Ohio State for the marquee game of Week 1. Here is Sark on Manning, the state of the program and why Texas has established itself as a top 10 program again.

Question: Arch Manning’s moment is finally here. He’s waited patiently for it. He’s the focal point of both the offense and the locker room now. How’s he embraced the new reality?

Sarkisian: I think there’s something that’s unique about Arch. You can watch him throw and you see when you get up on him in person, man, he’s a bigger guy than maybe people think. When you watch him throw, the arm talent and the deep ball is there. Then you watch him move and you’re like, wait, this guy’s a better athlete than I thought. Definitely got grandpa’s gene. It’s not the uncles, he got grandpa’s gene. There’s an infectious leadership that he has, that I don’t want to say is unintentional because he intentionally leads. You can feel that. But the unintentional leadership ability he has, players gravitate to him, they want to be around him.

They like him for who he is, not for the name on the back of his jersey. And I think that’s something that he provides. He’s a fiery guy. He enjoys playing the game. Even in practice he’ll make a throw, and he’ll look over at me and wink at me almost like, ‘Did you like that?’ And so we have really good rapport, but I understand now because of my rapport with him, why the players have really good rapport with him. He just has a natural ability to engage with people.

Q: What’s that rapport like?

Sarkisian: Sometimes it’s verbal, sometimes it’s nonverbal. But I think that’s part of the responsibility as a quarterback that when you look at a quarterback and why is it this position in sports that is so coveted? It’s because your job is really to instill belief in the locker room, your job is to instill belief in an organization or a team or in a staff, and then ultimately your job is to instill belief in a fan base. And I think that he does that very naturally. It’s not something that is manufactured or fabricated. It’s very natural for him to go along with all those other things, the skill set, the ability to do those things. And so, I’m excited for him. I just want to make sure that we’re really strong around him, that he doesn’t feel the weight of the world to have to go perform. I want us to play really well around him to enhance what he’s able to do.

Q: Will there be some grace for growth? Some people already are pegging him the first-team All-SEC quarterback. He’s spent his whole life as a Manning, so he’s prepared, I guess, but do you think he’s prepared for the first interception in Columbus? Or the moment when on-field adversity hits? Do you think he’s ready for the level of both praise and criticism that will come?

Sarkisian: I think one, the exposure he got last season was helpful. He got two career starts. He started as our quarterback in the first SEC game in the history of the school. And those were not all perfect. Granted, there were some great moments. He threw nine touchdowns and almost a thousand yards. There was a couple of bad picks in there, too. And in the end, I think he understands he is not riding the emotional roller coaster of the opinions of others and staying [with a] level of consistency in his approach, in his play, in his ability to pick people up. Easier said than done when you’re not in the real fire of it all. But we are fortunate that he got exposed to some of that, and he threw a couple bad picks, and it was OK.

Q: He missed a few blitz pickups, right?

Sarkisian: Yeah, and he gets hit in the back and things like that. Like he’s learning. And yeah, there’s probably going to be some grace needed. Unfortunately, it’s probably not going to be grace granted outside of our building. Inside of our building, sure, there will be, but outside of the building, the pundits are going to be the pundits, the fans are going to be the fans, the opposing fans are going to be the fans. But inside our building, I think the support that he’s going to get is going to be one that he’ll definitely appreciate.

Q: One impactful change this spring has been Duane Akina being back on the field. He was here from 2001 to 2013 and coached an elite assembly line of defensive backs. What’s it been like having him back?

Sarkisian: Having Coach Akina back has been awesome. It’s been great in the building and the timing felt right. When we lost Blake Gideon [to Georgia Tech], we still had Terry Joseph on staff [and a] connection between he and Pete Kwiatkowski was a perfect fit. I had heard about [Akina] as a coach on the field, but I had never really seen it. And he’s a very kind of even-keel guy in and around the building. But when you watch him coach, the energy that he provides at practice is infectious. It’s what you always wanted in all of your coaches. And so the fact that here’s this guy, the oldest coach in our staff and he’s running to the ball, he’s demanding excellence out of every player, I think has just been infectious. Not only amongst the staff, but I think the respect that the players have, knowing the history and track record that he’s had of great players … here when it was DBU to what he was able to do at Stanford. He’s been an awesome addition.

Q: Identity-wise on defense, will this team be built around the defensive backs?

Sarkisian: I would argue it might be the best position group we have on our team right now from sheer talent. Now we have some experience there with Michael Taaffe coming back, Derek Williams getting healthy, Jelani McDonald‘s experience, Jaylon Guilbeau‘s experience, Malik Muhammad‘s experience. But below those guys, I think our ability to recruit that position the last two years is really evident. The guys look the part, they all are impactful players on special teams and so [Akina has] inherited a really good room of talented players, competitive players that are going to help us down the road.

Q: Texas went through a nearly two-decade drought for first-round offensive linemen. Now there’s a flurry of them coming out and seemingly emerging. How do you feel about the offensive line and skill around Arch?

Sarkisian: We feel good, obviously, on the offensive line. There’s a couple new faces, but again, we got exposure to a couple of those new faces early on. And so the experience of [senior guard] DJ Campbell and [senior interior lineman] Cole Hutson are big. The experience that [sophomore left tackle] Trevor Goosby got, Trevor was blocking real guys in the last month of the season, which was good for him. The emergence of some new faces is going to be good. These guys were all high-level recruits, and now it’s time, and that’s OK.

Q: There has to be some optimism at tailback, right?

Sarkisian: I think that the backfield will be better, in some degree. We got two guys coming off of injuries in CJ Baxter and Christian Clark, and we really think highly of both of them. We have a 1,000-yard rusher coming back, Tre Wisner, and we have a true freshman kid who’s going to be a sophomore in Jerrick Gibson, who played some really significant meaningful snaps in some big games. And so I feel really good about the running back room.

Q: They’ll be some familiar faces at receiver, too, right?

Sarkisian: I think having DeAndre Moore and Ryan Wingo back is going to be big. And then we got some guys that, it’s time to step up and it’s their moment. I would say the one room that we probably have our biggest question mark in is in the tight end room. So the offense is there.

Q: What’s the vibe on the defensive side?

Sarkisian: I think more importantly is who we are on defense and the growth of who we have been as a defensive team from Year 1 through Year 4. Going into Year 5, we have real playmakers on the defensive side of the ball, whether it’s Anthony Hill, Colin Simmons, Trey Moore, and we touched on Michael Taaffe, we touched on Derek Williams and Liona Lefau and Ethan Burke. We have some real players on the defensive side of the ball, to where I don’t think Arch is ever going to have to go into a game thinking we have to outscore ’em. We need to play good football, and as a team we can win a lot of games. It’s not going to feel like the weight of the world where if we don’t score 40, we’re in trouble. We’re going to be in plenty of high-level games where 24, 28 points is going to be good enough to win. Now do we want to score 35, 42, 49? Of course. But I don’t think we’re always going to have to. It’s managing some of those games the right way to make sure that our defense can play to their ability.

Q: Let me wrap with a macro question. How do you feel going into Year 5? At age 51, you’ve said you were ready for this job as a head coach, having endured some adversity in your career. Can you reflect on the collision of the consistency you’ve had the last few seasons with your preparedness and maybe where you see it’s going at this moment?

Sarkisian: You never know why you’re really here. Why are you hired? There’s been great coaches before. All guys who have been really successful at other places. Why weren’t they as successful here? And then: Why are you here now? And I jokingly say, this administration thinks they hired you for a reason, and what the issues were, but in reality, a lot of times they don’t know because they’re not looking behind the curtain. They don’t know. And as we’ve gone through this journey going into Year 5, we’ve really tried to look forward and be forward thinking rather than look backwards and say what’s wrong? What was wrong? What’s going to be right?

And along the way, there’s been all these changes in college football that have happened, right? Literally, we got hired in the middle of COVID. So we were dealing with COVID. We were dealing with the new facility getting built. We didn’t have a team room, we didn’t have a locker room, I didn’t have an office. Then here comes, they say the transfer portal, but nobody really knew what that was and so we didn’t really know how to tap into it. Then here comes conference realignment, and we’re in the midst of moving from the Big 12 to the SEC. Then here comes College Football Playoff expansion, and we’re going from four teams to 12. Then here comes NIL, and what does NIL look like? And here comes collectives and how do you manage collectives and what that looks like. And now here comes revenue share. And now here comes a potential different expansion to the College Football Playoff.

We’re forever evolving. And so the one thing that we’ve tried to do, like I said, is be forward thinking. And not playing catch up, but in essence, think about where are we headed and how do we continually adapt and do what’s best for our players and do what’s best for our team and try to minimize the noise outside the building and focus on what we’re doing here with the players we recruit, with the staff that we hire, with the expansion of the recruiting department and the scouting department with the evolution of understanding how do you manage NIL money to now? How do you manage a cap space and what does that look like, and be ahead of it all, which I think that’s something we’ve done a pretty good job of. We were one of the very first, when NIL got presented, we were one of the very first of utilizing that. … And then how do we still recruit the high schools and believe in high school recruiting to build our culture and to start that process.

Q: That makes sense here, right?

Sarkisian: And I look back at my time with Pete Carroll [at USC] and how important that was in that seven-, eight-year run of the development of players and the old players teaching the younger players. And then I looked at what Nick [Saban] did and how that [Alabama] roster turned itself over, but yet how did he hire really good coaches year after year? Because the cycle of success is you’re going to lose people.

And so we try to tap into history to look to the future. And so far, so good. And we haven’t been perfect, and I don’t pretend us to be perfect, but I do think we’ve done things, a lot of things really well that have allowed us to stay at the forefront of college football. And again, when I got here, I didn’t want to be a one-hit wonder. I didn’t want to live in the portal — one year we’re good and the next year we’re not. We wanted to build something that could sustain and that in my opinion is high school recruiting. We surely have tapped into the free agent market through the transfer portal to fill needs. And I think we’ve had a really good balance there. And ultimately, sure, I want to win a national championship. There’s no question about it. But the fact that we went from 5-7 to 8-5 to … in the semifinals two years in a row, I think lends itself to the consistency of our program and the foundation of our program. Now granted, we want to get into that [title] game, and we want to win that game, but I think we’ve built something here that’s going to be long lasting, that’s going to be sustainable.

And I’ve been telling everybody, my goal is to retire here and I’m 51 today, and I hope I can coach a long, long time. But the only way to do that is to have continued success because here the standard is a standard. You either compete and win championships or you don’t. There’s not a lot of gray area. And so to do that, you got to have the right amount of energy, you got to have the right people around you and allow them to do their jobs. You got to recruit the right people so that you don’t take those massive drops. You might have a blip on the radar, but yet we sustain it in a way that we’re proud of. And I think we’re doing that. But like I said, there’s always more work to do.