Beyond three positions, the Horns have avoided injuries.

After the five-game season-opening stretch that saw the No. 2 Texas Longhorns beat every opponent by at least 19 points, the smallest margin of which came against the then-No. 10 Michigan Wolverines, head coach Steve Sarkisian’s team heads into its first bye week as comparatively healthy, in his words, before a season-defining stretch of games against the No. 19 Oklahoma Sooners in Dallas and the No. 5 Georgia Bulldogs in Austin.

During Sarkisian’s Monday press conference, he noted the need to get fresh and healthy during the bye week, influencing the decision to practice Tuesday and Wednesday, lift on Friday morning, and then give the players the rest of the weekend off to visit family, rest, and spend some time as observers of college football.

In addition to managing the team’s mental intensity, Sarkisian and his staff will use the bye week for similar physical reasons after the grind of preseason camp and the five games to the stat the season.

“I’m a believer in sports science. I look at different players, numbers and maybe who’s on a little bit of a decline and who needs to get refreshed or maybe who’s working their way back that needs to get pushed more or who just needs time off, right? And who’s breaking down a little bit. So we try to analyze the individual players on top of the totality of the team,” Sarkisian said.

The Longhorns are suffering from some key injuries — of the five scholarship players listed on Saturday’s injury report against the Bulldogs, three are running backs. Of the two walk ons, junior running back Colin Page would be the team’s fourth running back were he currently healthy. And starting quarterback Quinn Ewers missed his second straight game with the oblique injury sustained in the win over UTSA. The hamstring injury to Derek Williams has kept the rotation safety out of the last two games and forced Texas to rep super senior cornerback Jahdae Barron at safety while sophomore Jelani McDonald recovered from an ankle injury that kept him out two games.

“I think he’s been making steady progress one day to the next, which is a good sign — we haven’t had any setbacks,” Sarkisian said of Ewers. “It’s been steady progress. I think he’s getting stronger and more comfortable and more confident, so we’ll just kind of stay the course with that.”

As Texas starts to implement some of its Oklahoma game plan this week, Sarkisian will track 15-20 plays that Ewers feels comfortable with in practice to use against the Sooners if he’s able to make his injury return in the Cotton Bowl as he did two years ago from the shoulder injury sustained in the narrow loss to the Tide.

The Longhorns head coach hasn’t provided any public timetable on Williams or even the extent of the injury sustained by Gardner, the preseason camp addition because sophomore CJ Baxter and freshman Christian Clark had their season-ending injuries during camp.

But Sarkisian is happy with his team’s overall health.

“I’ll be honest with you — knock on wood — we really haven’t gotten bit by the injury bug that bad, comparatively, and there’s a lot of schools around the country down two, three, and four offensive linemen, and I’m knocking on wood, because, yes, we’ve lost some critical pieces — you lose your starting quarterback, that’s an issue, the running back situation, that’s an issue, and then a couple of the safeties became an issue. But outside of that, like I said, knock on wood, we’ve been really healthy, the offensive line, the tight ends, the wide receivers, the linebackers, the defensive front, our corners, and so forth,” Sarkisian said.

Sarkisian also circled back to his earlier comments about refreshing his team in multiple ways.

“I wrote that down — ‘get fresh and get healthy.’ And I think when I say, get fresh, yes, there’s a physical get fresh component to this, but I think there’s a mental get fresh, right?” Sarkisian said.

“Like you get kind of re-energized, recharge the battery a little bit, because I never want it to be mundane. I never wanted to be stale. I never wanted to feel like we’re going through the motions. I want our guys when they walk in the door of Moncrief to have a bounce in their step, to exude positive energy and positive vibes that can can generate energy in the next person. And so, the refresh part I think is as are more important than just the get jealthy part.”