Oklahoma-Texas Final: Three Takeaways from the Sooners’ 31-26 Victory

Oklahoma Sooners Beat Texas Longhorns 31-26

The Oklahoma-Texas game turned out to be a lot more exciting than anybody would have thought. The Sooners pulled out the 31-26 win, but it never should have been that close for this supposedly college football playoff powerhouse team.

However, let’s be a little fair here. Oklahoma-Texas is a rivalry, and anything can happen in the Red River Shootout. So coming away with the win is good enough.

But let’s also acknowledge that while Charlie Strong did a great job coaching this team to play this game tough, he blew it by burning a timeout on that 2-point conversion. That’s the reason Texas only had 20 seconds to do anything at the end instead of a minute, and that’s a huge difference.

Still, this was an exciting game, and we found out a little bit more about both teams over the weekend. Here are our three takeaways from the game.

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1. Bob Stoops Doesn’t Trust Trevor Knight

And who can blame Stoops for this one? Knight was severely overhyped after a bowl win against Alabama last week, but in reality, his greatest success this year has been drawing interest from Katy Perry. Knight was 12 of 20 for 129 yards and a touchdown. Decent numbers, but proof that Knight has no business being a Heisman candidate. He can’t win games on his own, and that’s going to be a problem for the Sooners going forward.

2. Tyrone Swoopes is Developing 

Swoopes has played terrible for the Longhorns up to this point, and it kept them from at least 1 win. But as Charlie Strong’s team still develops, he has reason to be encouraged by the sophomore quarterback. Swoopes had 334 yards and 2 touchdowns today, looking great against a loaded Oklahoma pass defense. He still made too many mistakes, but this game was against a loaded Oklahoma defense. He is slowly getting better, and that spells a decent future for the Longhorns.

3.  Oklahoma is NOT a College Football Playoff Team Right Now

I’m sorry, but the Sooners have not been impressive all year. They once again looked average at best against a Texas Longhorns team that is simply not good this year. Trevor Knight can’t play quarterback consistently, and what’s worse, the defense showed on Saturday that it is incredibly inconsistent as well. Knight is bad enough, but if the Oklahoma defense can’t dominate every team it plays, especially a bad Texas Longhorns offense, there’s no way these guys will make the College Football playoff. It’s hard to trust these guys to even come close to winning the Big 12 either.