For the second time in two years, the Oklahoma Sooners suffered an embarrassing loss to their Red River rival, the Texas Longhorns. The 34-3 loss is only slightly better than the 49-0 loss the Soones suffered in 2022 during Brent Venables first season as the head coach at Oklahoma.
Things started off promising for the Oklahoma Sooners. The defense forced a pair of three and outs to open the game, including an interception by Billy Bowman. Oklahoma’s pressure packages made Ewers uncomfortable in the early going.
The Sooners held the Longhorns to zero points in the first quarter. OU actually held a 3-0 lead after 15 minutes, and the defense was playing pretty well. But in the second quarter, the wheels began to fall off.
Texas went on an 11-play, 75-yard drive, culminating in a touchdown throw from Quinn Ewers to tight end Gunnar Heim on a play action throwback.
The Sooners struggled to tackle and allowed big runs in the ground game as Tre Wisner ran for 119 yards and a touchdown, averaging over nine yards per carry.
The Longhorns took complete control with the help of fumbles by their true freshmen, Hawkins and running back Taylor Tatum, on back-to-back drives.
Texas took advantage of those fumbles and expanded their lead to 21-3. A missed field goal before halftime kept it from being a bigger margin at the break. But at halftime, it felt like the game was pretty much over. Oklahoma’s offense couldn’t find any momentum in the second quarter and that spilled into the second half.
The Sooners offense never really got anything going after halftime. Hawkins looked like a true freshman, who was unwilling to throw the ball even when wide receivers appeared open or was reluctant to throw the ball into tight windows.
Texas didn’t really have to do much in the second half to secure the win. The Longhorns scored 13 points in the second half and coasted to another blowout win over the Sooners for the second time in three years under Brent Venables.
Oklahoma’s offense is a huge problem after six games. There hasn’t been a complete performance this season, and they haven’t found anything that shows that they do well.
The Sooners struggled to get the ball across midfield all game. It took until the final seconds of the game for the Sooners to get into scoring range while Texas was playing prevent defense.
For the game, Hawkins was 19 of 30 for 149 yards passing. Oklahoma averaged just 2.3 yards per carry on the day. Even when things seemed to be going well for the Sooners, they couldn’t sustain it.
On the other side of things, Texas racked up 406 total yards and was 5 of 13 on third down. The Longhorns ran for 177 yards and averaged 5.9 yards per carry. Quinn Ewers, making his return from an abdominal injury after sitting out the last two games was an efficient 20 of 29 for 199 yards and two total touchdowns.
The Sooners have a lot of questions to answer, with a stout South Carolina defense coming to Norman next week.
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