The biggest blowout in Texas’ favor in the 118-year history of the school’s rivalry with Oklahoma was not decided so much by execution Saturday (as the Sooners maintained) or on the practice field this past week (as the Longhorns suggested). It was won overwhelmingly by Texas — as only a 49-0 decision can be — months ago in the transfer portal.
That’s where the Longhorns landed former Southlake Carroll quarterback Quinn Ewers, plucking him off the Ohio State roster and watching him throw for 289 yards and four touchdowns against a Sooners defense hapless to stop him. And it’s where former OU quarterbacks in recent years have gone to Southern Cal (Caleb Williams joining head coach Lincoln Riley) and South Carolina (Spencer Rattler) and even SMU (Tanner Mordecai).
Throw in Dillon Gabriel’s inability to clear concussion protocol even though he warmed up before Saturday’s game, and you are left with a situation that screamed for inefficiency. Davis Beville got the starting call, but the Sooners ran some version of direct snap offense about half the afternoon in the Cotton Bowl. By the end of a humiliating loss, five Oklahoma players had completed nine of 17 passes for 39 yards and two interceptions.
“Right now we’re not great at a lot of things,” head coach Brent Venables said, after the Sooners endured their first three-game losing streak of the century. It’s not just the number of defeats that had Sooner fans escaping the north end zone in the third quarter, it’s the magnitude. When you’re ranked No. 6 in the nation, a 41-34 loss to Kansas State in Norman feels pretty bad. If only fans had known what was to come.
TCU basically pulled the plug on its offense last week in a 55-24 destruction of the Sooners. Then the unranked Longhorns rang up the biggest of their 64 wins over Oklahoma.
What must this be like for Venables?
It’s arguable that no coordinator was ever so successful for so long before finally becoming a head coach after Riley jumped ship and headed for LA. As some version of defensive coordinator at Oklahoma or Clemson the last 23 years, his teams played in eight national championship games and won the conference title more often than not. In 26 years as a full-time assistant, Venables has never been associated with a team that finished worse than 7-5.
Well, the Sooners are 3-3 and should not be favored to beat Kansas at home next week. What happens when a long, long wait for your dream job turns nightmarish this fast?
“Nothing shocks me,” Venables said, meeting with the media an hour after a record-setting defeat. “This game will punish you when you do all kinds of things whether coaching or playing. Having been on the other side of these things, I’ve learned it’s never as bad as it seems and it’s never as good as it seems.
“[But] right now it’s not good. I’m not trying to mask that.”
He’s simply trying to survive it. No one will show the Sooners a trace of sympathy — certainly not for watching quarterbacks transfer since that’s how Baker Mayfield, Kyler Murray and Jalen Hurts brought two Heisman Trophies and a runner-up finish to the school. One assumes Gabriel could return next week from the concussion he suffered at TCU, and that could jump start the offense. But what about this defense, Venables’ calling card for so many years?
It was not just the transfer portal that damaged the Sooners this offseason. It was the NFL draft. While Texas didn’t lose players (who was there to lose after a 5-7 season?), five OU starters from 2021 now play defense for Denver, Cleveland and Minnesota. Absent their leadership and without anything resembling a blue-chip quarterback, this is what can happen seemingly overnight to a quality team in today’s college game.
The Sooners’ last coaching change was one of the smoothest of all time. Bob Stoops hands the reins to Riley, Oklahoma keeps winning Big 12 championships and it feels like the program is never going to suffer. The reality is that OU finished 2021 not in the Big 12 title game or the playoff but in the Alamo Bowl. It was starting to slip before anyone really saw it.
Remove the key defensive players, watch Riley take his quarterback and top receiver Mario Williams to Southern Cal, toss in a couple key injuries and you have today’s Sooners. Venables’ first experience with the transfer portal as a head coach did him no favors. Oklahoma needs to win not just recruiting battles in Texas but transfer showdowns in the coming months to regain its footing before it heads for the murderous SEC in the near future.
“In some ways, maybe we look like a tired football team,” Venables said. “We’re having to play near perfect football and we’re just not able to do that.”
In 118 meetings, the score would suggest Oklahoma was never this short of perfect when it came time to play Texas.
