Oklahoma Sooners HC Brent Venables tells it like it is about his team and the weird 2026 season they’re having after beating Texas
The Oklahoma Sooners beat the Texas Longhorns in the Red River Rivalry, and Brent Venables coached a good game.
The Oklahoma Sooners did what nobody thought they could do. They beat the No. 1 Texas Longhorns 27-24 in the Red River Rivalry at the Cotton Bowl, moving to 3-2 and dropping Texas to 4-1. The Longhorns will lose that top spot in the rankings next week.
How did OU pull it off? It played clean football. It wasn’t always pretty, and it didn’t always go the Sooners’ way, but they didn’t beat themselves.
Brent Venables explains how Oklahoma beat Texas
Sooners head coach Brent Venables summed it up after the game.
“When we don’t make the catastrophic mistakes, we got everything we need to win every single game,” Venables said.
Oklahoma proved that on Saturday. The Sooners beat a good Texas team at a neutral site by avoiding the big errors that have hurt them before. Texas made those mistakes this time. The Longhorns gave up a special teams touchdown when the Sooners blocked a punt and recovered it in the end zone. Texas quarterback Arch Manning also threw a pick-six to Peyton Bowen, who returned it 42 yards for a touchdown.
Then the Texas defense folded late. John Mateer led a two-minute drive to get the Sooners into field goal range, and they kicked the game-winner. Those are the kinds of mistakes Oklahoma usually makes. This time, Texas made them, and that shows this OU team has what it takes to be good. It just has to put it all together. It might be too late, and it’s impossible to predict how the rest of the season plays out. But who’s to say Oklahoma doesn’t win every game from here on out? The Sooners showed they can do it.
The offensive line still has to be better
Oklahoma still has plenty to fix, and the offensive line is at the top of that list. John Mateer had enough time to throw at times, but for most of the game, the line got overwhelmed. To be fair, the group is being held together with patchwork right now. Injuries have piled up up front, and nearly everyone in that room is banged up.
That can’t be an excuse for the rest of the season, though. If Oklahoma wants a chance to finish 10-2 and build a resume good enough to get into the College Football Playoff, the line has to hold up better than it did against Texas. The good news is that this game showed the Sooners can get there. Venables said exactly what he needed to say about his team during a strange 2026 season, and his players backed it up in the biggest game on the schedule.
Here’s where it stands for Oklahoma
Next up for OU is Kentucky. The Wildcats are a decent team and a rising program, so this won’t be a game Oklahoma can sleepwalk through. The Sooners will be at home in Norman, and riding the momentum from a win over the No. 1 team in the country should set them up well.
The question is how they respond after the high of beating their biggest rival. Either way, Oklahoma now has a chance to move to 4-2 and keep building on the formula Venables laid out. If the Sooners keep avoiding the catastrophic mistakes, Saturday might not be the last time they surprise people this season.
