No Rest for the Weary: Oklahoma Must Rebound Quickly With Daunting Stretch Ahead

NORMAN — Brent Venables doesn’t need a reminder about what lies ahead for Oklahoma.

“I know what’s down the road,” Venables said, “and so do our guys.”

Following Saturday’s matchup against New Mexico the 24th-ranked Sooners will take on Georgia and Texas in back-to-back matchups.

The Bulldogs enter this weekend’s game against Arkansas ranked No. 2, behind only the Longhorns. Texas moved into the top spot in the polls after beating previously top-ranked Ohio State last week.

That treacherous path makes Oklahoma’s need to rebound and quickly adjust from last weekend’s 17-10 loss to Michigan even more pressing.

“We can’t get hung up on this for too long,” cornerback Eli Bowen said. “We’ve got to learn from it and finish the season how we want to finish it.”

There isn’t time for a gradual improvement, as the season can get away from the Sooners and their hopes for a return trip to the College Football Playoff could be dashed by early October.

Of course, even with significant improvement, that could be the case if they fall to Georgia and Texas.

“You just kind of put it all into what you’re doing now, that New Mexico is the next one in front of us,” Venables said Tuesday. “And so recognize the challenge of all of it. It’s to get your guys to show up every day and put everything they’ve got in the moment.

“That’s the biggest challenge — to get guys focused, to get them to have a focused, passionate intensity about what they’re doing, to not be in self-preservation mode, to again. Have those honest conversations. That’s all. Again, that’s from a development standpoint, that’s what’s critical. And then the byproduct of making the improvement that we need to make, and have an opportunity to go compete against some excellent football teams starting this week, and then over the next several weeks after that.”

The upcoming stretch will be one of the toughest in Oklahoma history.

In the 90 years since The Associated Press poll began, Oklahoma has played teams ranked in the top two back-to-back just three times.

Each time, the Sooners won at least one of the matchups.

The most recent of those instances came during the famed “Red October” run in 2000 when they beat No. 2 Kansas State and top-ranked Nebraska in consecutive games over a three-week span to move to the No. 1 spot themselves en route to the Sooners’ most recent national title.

The other instances came in 1987, when they knocked off the top-ranked Cornhuskers to end the regular season and then fell to No. 2 Miami in the Orange Bowl, and in 1963 when the third-ranked Sooners beat No. 1 USC on the road and then two weeks later fell to No. 2 Texas.

Oklahoma hasn’t played two teams ranked in the top two at any point in the season since 2008 and only four other times in their history.

While New Mexico certainly isn’t at the level of the teams that await the Sooners, even beyond the two-game crucible ahead, the Lobos have the firepower to at least push Oklahoma for at least a portion of the game.

Though the season is still very young, and schedules wildly different so statistical rankings don’t matter much, New Mexico is one of only three teams in the top 10 currently in both scoring offense and scoring defense.

Miami and Kansas State are the others.

Venables pointed to last season, saying his team’s identity wasn’t firmly established until the November run that ultimately lifted the Sooners into the College Football Playoff.

This season. That identity might need to be established much earlier.

“These tough, challenging moments, they do reveal character, the toughness, the leadership, the maturity of our team,” Venables said. “Anybody can be committed when everything is going right. That was a real test of who our guys are. The response will show whether our commitment’s conditional or this is who we are.

“I really believe this is who we are.”

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