How Kyle Flood’s Div. 1-AA experience could help Texas as it strives for a long season

Wednesday starts a journey for Texas football that could conceivably end on Monday January 20, 2025. In the 173 days until then, the Longhorns hope to play 16 football games as part of a season that includes a Southeastern Conference championship and three College Football Playoff wins on the way to the program’s fifth national title.

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Texas tied a program record by playing 14 games last season when it made the final scheduled iteration of the four-team College Football Playoff. Sixteen contests is a different animal, and the potential for 17 games exists as well. That’s 2-3 more games of physical and mental taxation, all in high stakes affairs.

Head coach Steve Sarkisian has experience with a lengthy schedule. As the offensive coordinator for the Atlanta Falcons in 2017, Sark called an offense that played in 18 games. That’s the NFL, though. Not college.

That goes to show how much of a novelty a season with a 12-team playoff at the end of it is. There’s justified excitement for it.

But programs have to determine how to prepare for the potential of a campaign where a team could play 16 or 17 games.

Texas offensive coordinator Kyle Flood has some experience with this new quandary. Not only was Flood with Sarkisian in Atlanta in 2017, but a bullet point on his resume from his time at the Division 1-AA level can assist the Longhorns as they navigate just how physical preseason camp should be ahead of what could be the longest season in program history.

Flood was the assistant head coach and offensive line coach on K.C. Keeler‘s staff at Delaware from 2002 to 2004. In 2003 the Blue Hens went 11-1 in the regular season, even beating Navy, to win a share of the Atlantic 10 and earn the No. 2 overall seed in the 1-AA playoffs. Delaware then rattled off four wins, including winning the final three games in the span of 14 days, to complete a 15-1 season and bring home the program’s first 1-AA championship and sixth national title overall.

Flood said Tuesday that he believes he started the same offensive line combination every week during the 16-game slate.

“I didn’t have nearly the depth that I have now,” Flood said. “I don’t know if I did that because I wanted to. We did play with another lineman as an extra tight end in certain situations like we do here. I’ve been through this before and I know that the players will be able to do it.”

Flood, who has four years of experience as a head coach himself, admitted there needs to be some malleability when it comes to physicality. He mentioned that how hard coaches push players changes year to year and team to team.

“It depends,” he added.

Recall also that the Longhorns, after a 13-game season, used many of their allotted bowl practices as opportunities for the younger players to earn reps while the starters and second-stringers largely rested up until it was time to install the Washington game plan. The Longhorns were beat up then, so too were the Huskies, so it’s not unreasonable to think a 16-17 game season could inflict more damage.

That’ll be a task Sarkisian will have to manage. Luckily, he has someone like Flood who has additional eyes on maintaining the needed level in practice to succeed on Saturdays. Flood has faith in Sarkisian, too.

They’ll have to do it right, because the effects could be catastrophic if they don’t keep things as physical as they need to be.

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“You don’t want to go the other way,” Flood said. “You go the other way and say we’re not going to hit in the week, and then what happens is you may not be ready to hit on Saturday if you do that. There has to be some physicality during the week to make sure you’re ready to go on Saturday.”

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