Texas Longhorns head coach Steve Sarkisian walks down the field following his team’s loss in Red River Rivalry against the Oklahoma Sooners, on Saturday, Oct. 10, 2026 at Cotton Bowl in Dallas.
Shafkat Anowar/The Dallas Morning News
On one hand, Oklahoma’s last-second, 27-24 upset of No. 1 Texas should seemingly go down as the greatest upset in the history of this ancient rivalry, seeing as it’s only the third time the top-ranked team has lost, and never to one unranked.
On the other hand, it seems not a little blasphemy to attach “greatest” to any aspect of this edition of the Red River Rivalry in front of 92,100, at least half no doubt still in stark disbelief.
Let me just say this: Even if Steve Sarkisian hadn’t made a critical mistake with two minutes left; even if John Mateer hadn’t made his two best plays all day to set up Tate Sandell’s 47-yard game-winner; even if the Longhorns had somehow hung on and won, they’d no longer be No. 1.
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Related: 5 thoughts from Oklahoma’s shocking upset of No. 1 Texas: Sooners surge in second half
Not after what we saw on a sun-baked afternoon at the Cotton Bowl.
“We’ve got a good football team, so we’re not dead,” Sark said afterward.
“We’re going to be OK.”
Sounds like UT all right.
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Hard to call yourself one of the best teams in the country, let alone No. 1, when you can’t run the ball, you can’t protect the quarterback and you give up 14 points on a blocked punt and a pick-six.
The Longhorns went into the game 7.5-point favorites, and, for a half, anyway, they looked every bit of it. Oklahoma’s offense wasn’t going anywhere. Just like it didn’t last year or the year before.
The Sooners didn’t score their first offensive touchdown against Texas since 2023 until the fourth quarter, and they were right in the thick of it.
They still had a chance because Arch Manning threw two four-quarter interceptions. The first was a pick-six; the second, the end of Texas’ last chance.
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Manning finished 19 of 31 for 260 yards, outdueling John Mateer, who looked overmatched all afternoon against Texas’ defense. He finished just 18 of 26 for 155 yards.
But he saved his two biggest completions for the Sooners final possession, hitting Isaiah Sategna with dimes on both sides of the field to set up Randall’s winner.
The difference, at least offensively?
Manning’s two picks to Mateer’s zero.
“I can’t be loose with the ball,” Manning said afterward.
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“I think we beat ourselves.”
Frankly, I’m not even sure the Sooners would disagree with that assessment. Besides the physical errors, there was the mental blip by Sark after the Longhorns had driven down to the Oklahoma 35 with two minutes left.
Fourth-and-2, what do you do?
Thought long and hard about it, Sark said. Went round and round. Kept asking questions all through the timeout.
“Do we have enough confidence in what had up that I felt like could get the first down?” he asked. “And also, did I feel like Gianni [Spetic] can make the kick? And then you’re looking at the clock and situation of the game. You start playing with all the factors in it.
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“I felt like the kick was the smart play.”
Here’s why it wasn’t: If you want to think of yourself as an SEC contender, let alone in the running for a national title, you have to believe you can get two yards. Get it, and you burn more clock. Give yourself a kick with better odds. Maybe even a touchdown.
Instead of that, the Longhorns played into the Sooners’ hands in the final seconds, much as they did throughout the second half.
Of course, it’s not like Texas hadn’t demonstrated these issues all year. The Longhorns needed that 20-point comeback against Ohio State because of the failures in the three quarters preceding it. They had no such comeback in them Saturday.
The defense remains world-class, though repeated penalties in the second half kept Sooner drives alive.
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The offensive issues are bigger than just Manning. The offensive line isn’t what you’d expect from a national contender. Neither is the running game.
Should Texas consider a change at play-caller?
“Not a chance,” said Sark, the man in question.
What do you need to do, then?
“We need to play better.”
Not much doubt about that, because it doesn’t get any easier from here on out. Give the Sooners credit, they’ve got a great defense. The offense is, well, offensive. Imaging what might have happened Saturday if Texas had played an offense that could get out of its own way.
For the record, only twice has the No. 1-ranked team in this series lost, and both times it was OU. The first was in 1963, when Texas was ranked second. The last time was in 2008, when Texas was fifth. The ’08 game, in particular, was a classic. Come to think of it, let’s scratch the notion that this was the greatest upset.
These two teams are more alike than we thought.