A Red River Rivalry loss — the Oklahoma Sooners’ first of the year — doesn’t mean the end of the world. They can still make the College Football Playoffs. However, losing to the Texas Longhorns stings that program so much, and the way they have three or four years under Brent Venables isn’t good either.

But this is just one game. They can use this to improve, and they feel they will.

“Going in, we had a heck of a team; we’ve done a good job of improving. Through defeat, you learn a lot about yourself. I hurt for them. But you have to be able to carry that weight,” head coach Brent Venables told reporters after the game.

Let’s hope they learn from it, but for now, in a game like this, you have to talk about who performed well and who underperformed. In this business, we call that “Winners and Losers.”

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Sooners’ Winners and Losers from Red River Rivalry loss

Loser: QB John Mateer

There’s not much to say here: we all saw it on a pretty national stage. Mateer just wasn’t ready to come back yet. Whether that’s physically with the thumb, mentally with a loss of practice and preparation, or just simply not good enough against that level of competition, he wasn’t ready.

Mateer sailed throws away from open receivers, threw into windows that weren’t open, and held the ball too long at times. He just wasn’t good, but that’s not normal for him, so there is hope he is on the opposite side of this list after next week when the Sooners play a bad South Carolina team.

Winner: DB Kendal Daniels

This may be the best game Daniels has played all year, and he looked like an absolute monster. He looks like an NFL player the way he blew up plays, screens, and just flew to the ball.

Daniels was the most physical defensive back on the field, and maybe the only one who played well. He finished with a team-high six tackles and had two tackles for loss to go along with that.

Loser: Secondary

This secondary, which is exceptionally young and homegrown, may not be as good as we thought. This is their first bad game, so maybe I’m wrong — and I sure hope I am — but they made far too many mistakes beyond how Daniels played, and Peyton Bowen’s big pass breakup in the end zone.

The Longhorns threw far too many screens for their offense to be as effective as it was, which is essentially up to the secondary to stop by shedding blocks and flying to the ball, but they missed too many open-field tackles.

Winner: DE R Mason Thomas

He had the lone sack in the game and three tackles to go along with it. The sack was pretty good, and considering it was the only one in the game since the Sooners couldn’t hold contain and get to Arch Manning, it was even more impressive.

Thomas continues to be a disruptor and hasn’t really had many bad plays.

Loser: Offensive line

It couldn’t pass protect well, as it allowed Mateer to be sacked five times (not all were its fault), and let him get pressured a ton all day.

Then, on top of that, it still can’t move any defensive linemen off the line of scrimmage to create gaps for the running game. The running game issue isn’t with the running backs, outside of Jaydn Ott not being able to do anything. It’s been on the offensive line, primarily.

Winner: DE Taylor Wein

Wein had maybe his best game of the year, in which he didn’t have a sack. The Sooners’ defensive end had a team-high three tackles for loss and four total tackles.

He was great, especially when the Sooners were stopping the run at the beginning of the game. This is one of those games that’s promising for your defense because it shows just how good the defensive depth really is.

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Justin Churchill