{"id":456427,"date":"2026-10-04T20:50:11","date_gmt":"2026-10-04T20:50:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/456427\/"},"modified":"2026-10-04T20:50:11","modified_gmt":"2026-10-04T20:50:11","slug":"oklahoma-turns-page-on-bye-week-to-turn-focus-on-top-ranked-texas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/456427\/","title":{"rendered":"Oklahoma Turns Page on bye Week to Turn Focus on Top-Ranked Texas"},"content":{"rendered":"

NORMAN \u2014\u00a0With the bye week<\/a> in the rearview mirror, it\u2019s time for Oklahoma to turn the page.<\/p>\n

The unranked Sooners<\/a>, coming off a trio of lifeless offensive performances<\/a>, get their biggest test of the season when they take on top-ranked Texas in the annual Red River Shootout at 2:30 p.m. Saturday in Dallas\u2019 Cotton Bowl.<\/p>\n

Oklahoma is looking to snap a two-game losing streak in the series and give Brent Venables just his second win over the Longhorns as a head coach.<\/p>\n

The Sooners have lost five consecutive games against No. 1 opponents, with the most recent being their 34-3 loss to the Longhorns in 2024.<\/p>\n

Oklahoma\u2019s last win over a top-ranked opponent came over Missouri in the 2007 Big 12 Championship Game.<\/p>\n

Last season, it was Texas which came into the matchup with the then sixth-ranked Sooners unranked after two losses in the first five games.<\/p>\n

The Longhorns upset Oklahoma 23-6 to start a 7-1 stretch that extended the rest of the season.<\/p>\n

Linebacker Kip Lewis said there\u2019s a path for the Sooners to pull off a similar upset \u2014\u00a0and to engineer a similar turnaround to Texas\u2019 last season, and the one OU made last November to make a run to the College Football Playoff.<\/p>\n

\u201cCommunication, grit, physicality behind our pads and just working together,\u201d Lewis said of what the Sooners needed to do to pull off a win over the Longhorns.<\/p>\n

Oklahoma has won seven games over No. 1 opponents during its history but is looking for its first-ever such win as an unranked team.<\/p>\n

The Sooners tried to tamp down the importance of OU-Texas during the bye week, focusing on internal improvement instead of looking past the week toward the Longhorns.<\/p>\n

\u201cI try not to jump the gun on excitement and emotions and stuff, but yes, I mean, it gets pretty exciting,\u201d Lewis said last week about the emotions of facing Texas.<\/p>\n

Lewis has played in the game before. He has 14 career tackles combined in the last four Red River Shootouts.<\/p>\n

It will be the first OU-Texas game for plenty of other Sooners.<\/p>\n

Those include tight end Rocky<\/a> Beers<\/a>, whose previous biggest rivalry matchups were during his time at Air Force when the Falcons took on Army and Navy.<\/p>\n

He transferred to Florida International for the 2023-24 seasons before spending last season playing at Colorado State.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m pumped, man,\u201d Beers said. \u201cI\u2019ve had this date circled on my calendar. The whole atmosphere around it, I\u2019m just really excited to be in that atmosphere, see if I can compete with the big boys.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s why you come to schools like Oklahoma from CSU. You want to see if you can play with the big boys, and I want a shot, so I\u2019m excited.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sign up to our free newsletter<\/a>\u00a0and follow us on Facebook and X for the latest news.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"Add us as a preferred source on GoogleFollow<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NORMAN \u2014\u00a0With the bye week in the rearview mirror, it\u2019s time for Oklahoma to turn the page. The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":456428,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[27,29,28],"class_list":["post-456427","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-texas","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/456427","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=456427"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/456427\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/456428"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=456427"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=456427"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=456427"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}