Oklahoma-Texas Stock Report: Who's Up, Who's Down for OU

DALLAS — Just 17 days ago, John Mateer was waking up from surgery on his broken right thumb. His post-surgical mind was probably not immediately focused on playing football in Dallas today.

But through the sutures, the surgical screws, the brain fog and the swelling, through the soreness and the rehab and the doubt, there stood Oklahoma’s quarterback on Saturday, taking snaps, taking hits and taking chances against Texas.

All 92,000 gathered inside Cotton Bowl Stadium admired Mateer’s grit, his toughness, his determination — and surely his seemingly mutant healing abilities — even if they didn’t all cheer for him.

But getting off the gurney and running into danger doesn’t always equate to heroics.

After breaking his thumb, having surgery, waiting through the open date and watching against Kent State, Mateer struggled to move the football against a mighty Texas defense, and the unranked Longhorns beat the No. 6-ranked Sooners 23-6.

As Mateer threw three interceptions (and certainly could have thrown more), backup quarterback Michael Hawkins was apparently an afterthought of the OU coaching staff, even as the fan base called his name.

But Saturday’s outcome — Oklahoma closed as a 1 1/2- to 2 1/2-point underdog — wasn’t entirely on Mateer.

The Oklahoma defense started great but couldn’t sustain it as Texas scored on three straight cross-country possessions to take a 13-6 lead late in the third quarter.

Then the Longhorns broke the game open for good when Ryan Niblett returned a punt 75 yards for a touchdown and a 20-6 Longhorn advantage midway through the fourth quarter.

The Sooners will lick their wounds after being kicked around — and failing to score a touchdown at the State Fair of Texas — for the third time in four years.

Now, Oklahoma tackles the second half of the season staring down the nation’s most difficult schedule, starting next week at South Carolina — the only unranked team left on the slate.

Here’s the Sooners On SI Stock Report from OU’s win over Kent State:

UP, then DOWN: QB John Mateer

Everyone loves a hero. But Mateer simply did not have a clean game. He threw two interceptions in the first half — the second one (see below) just got away from him when he tried to hit an open receiver in the end zone — and a couple times came up favoring his thumb.

But then he started the second half with two bad throws that both should have been intercepted but were dropped by Texas defenders.

His third pick finally came in the third quarter with a ball that was thrown way behind Isaiah Sategna, who got just enough hand on the ball to tip it high in the air.

While Manning completed 21-of-27 passes for 166 yards and a touchdown with zero interceptions (and also rushed for 34 yards), Mateer hit just 20-of-37 for 202 yards with no TDs and three picks.

It was the first time in Mateer’s college career as a starter he didn’t account for at least one touchdown.

DOWN: S Robert Spears-Jennings

Jennings missed a tackle on a short screen pass on Texas’ field goal drive in the first half, and he missed another on the first Longhorns’ drive of the second half that helped take Texas off its 6-yard line and resulted in a field goal that built the Longhorns’ lead to 13-6 heading into the fourth quarter.

UP: K Tate Sandell

As Mateer struggled and the OU running game again went nowhere, Sandell was OU’s only reliable form of offense.

In the first quarter, Sandell made a 42-yard kick to give OU a 3-0 lead, and in the second quarter, he knocked through a 41-yarder to make it 6-0.

OU’s lousy possession to end the first half and Mateer’s wild throw into the end zone was as close as the Sooners came to scoring the rest of the way.

DOWN: OC Ben Arbuckle/Head Coach Brent Venables

Oklahoma’s end-of-half clock management was as bad as it gets, and cost the Sooners a shot at 3 points, if not 7.

OU took over at its own 20 with 4:29 to play but botched any chance at points with several mistakes from the sideline.

The Sooners had one timeout, and ran the football on first-and-15 and first-and-10, which wound down the clock. The entire possession, there was no urgency — which is fine, as you don’t want to give Texas another shot at scoring. But the players’ body language was too relaxed, even lackadaisical. Just the opposite of the usual two-minute tempo.

There were no passes to the boundary to stop the clock, but four throws went up the middle and were tackled inbounds while the clock ran.

Then before its final play, OU made an offensive substitution with 27 seconds left on the clock, which allowed Texas the opportunity to sub — which the Longhorns did, very slowly.

Then, with the game clock running out, the Sooners finally utilized their final timeout with 10 seconds left.

The final play was an interception on which Mateer had a receiver open in the end zone, but misfired on his release and resulted in his second interception of the half.

The Sooners appeared to be playing for a field goal the whole time before Mateer’s final throw, and ended up with no points at all.

In the fourth quarter, Oklahoma trailed 20-6, and Venables chose to go for it on fourth-and-22 instead of attempting a 54-yard field goal to cut it to 11.

The kick would have been a relatively high-percentage scoring play and maybe a shot of momentum. The fourth-and-22 was a prayer that sucked the last bit of life out of the defense and sent Sooner Nation to the exits.

Also, it probably wasn't a good idea to keep Mateer on the field getting chased around by Texas defenders in the final minutes facing a 17-point deficit. He almost threw a fourth pick, and ended up getting knocked around multiple times in an unwinnable situation.

DOWN: RT Derek Simmons

Simmons went down in the first quarter with a left leg/ankle injury as a Texas defender rolled into him from behind.

After struggling at times last week against Kent State, Simmons was holding his own against the Longhorn defense before he went out.

He was replaced by Stanford transfer Luke Baklenko.

DOWN: OU’s big, bad defensive line

Against a Texas offensive front that has struggled to move the football all season (especially against Power 4 conference opponents), the Sooner defensive line did virtually nothing outside of the Longhorns’ first three possessions.

Texas gained just 20 yards on their first 14 plays, then Steve Sarkisian and Arch Manning put together three consecutive scoring drives: 12 plays, 75 yards and a field goal, 14 plays, 75 yards and a touchdown, and 13 plays, 65 yards and a field goal.

The Sooners came in ranked No. 1 in the country in third-down stops, and Texas was ranked 115th in third-down offense. But UT converted nine of its next 10 third downs and took control of the game, mixing runs by Tre Wisner and quick throws by Manning to keep the OU defensive front guessing.