After the Cotton Bowl loss, Texas Longhorns’ senior Jahdae Barron shared how head coach Steve Sarkisian prepares the team for all aspects of life

For the second year in a row, the Texas Longhorns fell just short of making it to the national championship. Senior defensive back Jahdae Barron was a part of both teams and so many more big moments for Texas football.

A five-year player, Barron arrived on campus before head coach Steve Sarkisian and was one of the main players involved in rebuilding under Sarkisian.

Barron, an Austin native, stuck by the program through a coaching change and 5-7 season because he believed in Sarkisian’s message and culture.

“Coach Sark, he’s changed my life completely,” Barron said. “I’m totally a different person just on and off the field and how I care about myself and just carry myself and things like that. But I was always told the purpose serves a purpose that’s a lot greater than me and any individual. But (Sarkisian and Quinn Ewers), they most definitely changed my life and everybody else included in the program.”

Though he wasn’t initially recruited by Sarkisian, he stayed at Texas because it was important to stay close to his hometown. In four years with Sarkisian, he went from making 18 tackles as a linebacker in 2021 to being a starting defensive back who made 67 tackles, led the SEC with five interceptions and won the Thorpe Award.

Despite all of his success on the football field, Barron wants people to know the impact that Sarkisian had on himself and the rest of the team off the field.

“I know he tells y’all guys all the time, but as soon as he got here, our GPAs got better,” Barron said. “He pushed me to graduate. I know that was hard on him. But there are amazing things that he’s done, and it’s beyond football. He truly wants everybody to be a better person, and the better the person, the better the ballplayer.”

While Sarkisian knows that his players left it all out on the field and were unable to come out on top, he also knows that this isn’t the end for most of them.

“I’m very proud,” Sarkisian said. “I told these guys in the locker room, they need to hold their heads high. There’s nothing to be ashamed of for what they did this season, the work that they put in, the challenges that we were faced with. Everybody’s got their own unique challenges. We had ours.

“But never did anyone complain, we never got the ‘poor me’s.’ They just worked. They came back to work. As a coach, that makes you proud. But what I do know is I think that every player that leaves our program is a better man. And for these two guys right here, Jahdae [Barron] was here when I got here. Quinn [Ewers] coming in and trusting us. That permeates throughout our locker room. When you have trust from your leaders, then you get trust from the other players in that locker room.”

Now, as Barron used his final year of eligibility, he’s expected to enter the NFL Draft. And as he departs, he’s better man than how he came to Texas.