Despite starting the game off extremely well and the offense playing better than ever against the Commodores this weekend, the defense seemingly hit a wall in the 4th quarter. Texas' defense allowed Vanderbilt to crawl all the way back to within 3 points of tying up the game on Saturday after being absolutely dominant throughout the first three quarters of the matchup.
The Commodores scored 21 unanswered points in the 4th quarter, and it was obvious that something was wrong on the backend of the defense. Vanderbilt receivers were getting open unusually fast as the game wore on, and Sark addressed this during the presser:
"The fourth quarter, there's definitely things that we're going to have to improve upon on that front. We should be better in those scenarios with the pass rush that we have. Clearly, we were banged up in the secondary. There was a moment in there where we didn't have either starting corner, we didn't have either starting safety. We were holding on a little bit. We've got to play more with the mindset of going to win the game, not just holding on to not lose the game."
"We've been exhausted defensively. I think we played 172 snaps in the last two games with Kentucky and Mississippi State combined. That's a lot of football. That's a lot of running. I felt like we were a little fatigued on defense and that's why we adjusted a little bit of what we did practice wise. The plan was to play more people, then we kind of got forced into playing more people when Manny got banged up. I liked what Kade Phillips was doing. We kind of left him in there. Again, experience is a great thing to have. If we can generate a little more experience for Warren (Roberson), for Kobe (Black), for Kade to go along with Manny and Jaylon (Guilbeau)."
It's honestly nice to hear Sarkisian be so transparent about something like this, as some coaches out there would be "afraid" to mention fatigue or their team being tired.
Yes, the game was closer than it should have been but the Longhorns were able to defeat arguably the hottest team in the SEC over the past few weeks. This win went a long way in getting Texas back into the top 15 of the AP Poll again, and it's a huge victory to have on their postseason resume'.