How Oklahoma’s Players Plan to ‘Flush’ Loss to Texas in Red River Rivalry

DALLAS — Saturday’s Red River Rivalry game was forgettable for Oklahoma.

The No. 6 Sooners lost 23-6 to unranked Texas for their third defeat in the last four meetings of the series. OU entered the game 5-0, and with the loss, the Sooners are 1-1 in SEC play.

Oklahoma will certainly fall in the AP Top 25 with the loss, and the Sooners are no longer in the driver’s seat in the SEC.

The good news for OU? There’s plenty of football to be played. The Sooners have six conference games left on the schedule, giving them plenty of time to climb back.

But dwelling on their dreadful defeat will do them no good if they hope to get back into the race.

“I think Coach (Brent) Venables said it well in the postgame meeting,” OU quarterback John Mateer said. “He said we have to stay together. Can’t flinch. Don’t have time to sit around and mope and be upset.”

Saturday was Mateer’s first time playing in the Red River Rivalry after transferring to OU from Washington State after the 2024 season. He started against the Longhorns just 17 days after undergoing surgery on his right hand.

While miraculous that he appeared against Texas, Mateer’s return didn’t go as planned. The quarterback completed 20 of his 38 pass attempts for 202 yards and three interceptions.

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Mateer knows that he will need to be at his best for Oklahoma to rebound from Saturday’s loss.

“It’s important to show my response in the work,” Mateer said. “Saying it is one thing, but I’ll come ready to go, watch the film tonight, be ready tomorrow and move onto the next week.”

Mateer’s inconsistencies were far from the Sooners’ only woes against Texas.

The Sooners’ offensive line struggled to protect on both pass and run plays: Mateer was sacked five times, while OU’s backs rushed for only 48 yards.

Defensively, OU struggled to finish tackles when pursuing quarterback Arch Manning and running back Quintrevion Wisner.

Offensive lineman Febechi Nwaiwu played in last year’s installment of the Red River Rivalry, when OU lost 34-3 to the Longhorns. The Sooners won only one more conference game after that loss last year.

This time, Nwaiwu wants the sting of defeat to be fuel for the second half of the season.

“We’re going to feel this one,” Nwaiwu said. “You know we’re all feeling it. We gotta move past it though. We have to feel the hurt, feel the pain and use that pain to move on and do better the next game.”

Wide receiver Isaiah Sategna highlighted the importance of finding a balance between remembering and forgetting the pain of losing to a bitter rival.

“We got to learn from it,” Sategna said. “After today, we’ve got to flush it and move on to the next.”

Next for the Sooners is their first conference road game of 2025. The Sooners will battle South Carolina in Columbia with kickoff scheduled for 11:45 a.m.

Senior defensive end R Mason Thomas believes that the South Carolina game can be a turning point in OU’s season — if the Sooners handle defeat in a proper, mature way.

“The loss hurts, but there’s nothing we can do about it now,” Thomas said. “There’s still a lot of football left. This is our sixth game of the season, we got six more left. So if we keep looking back at this loss and, ‘Oh me’ or ‘Woe is me’ feeling sorry about ourselves, we won’t continue to prepare for the next game, which we could ultimately lose, too.”