Steve Sarkisian and Texas DC Pete Kwiatkowski harped on the defense all week and challenged them to put more of an emphasis on creating turnovers going forward. Yes, this should've already been a goal, but it sounds like it was the main goal heading into week 2.
Throughout practice last week, players were constantly given the "green light" to not only make stops, but to try different things to take the football away from the opposing offense. Punching footballs out of ballcarriers hands, "jumping" routes in the secondary, and making sure that tackling form was conducive to forcing fumbles was focused on.
In his postgame interview, Sarkisian had a few things to say about the defense's successful day:
"We talked all week... about our ability to generate turnovers on defense. It wasn't just about stopping people, but we needed to attack the football more. Clearly, we did that in the first half, getting the four turnovers in a variety of ways and a bunch of different people creating those turnovers."Steve Sarkisian
Those 4 turnovers, 3 forced fumbles and 1 interception, really helped Texas not only give Arch Manning and the offense more opportunities to score points, but to retain momentum and confidence throughout the game.
"I think defensively, I was so pumped about the turnovers because you heard me talking about them all week. To be a great defense, it's not just about stopping people. It's about taking the ball off of them and it's about creating really good field position for your offense. That's how they can really impact the game, and our defense totally changed the momentum of the game today from the start by creating those turnovers."Steve Sarkisian
One thing's for sure, if the Longhorns' defense is able to suck the life out of and create top notch turnovers like this all year long, it's going to be pretty dang hard for opposing offenses to do anything against them in 2025.