Tate Sandell hit a 47-yard field goal on the final play, Oklahoma beat No. 1 Texas 27-24 in the Red River rivalry, and John Mateer grabbed a flag. As Texas players headed for their tunnel, Oklahoma’s quarterback planted the Sooners flag in the turf in front of them, then turned and flashed a Horns Down at them.
Plenty of people decided he had not earned it. They have a point about the box score and no point at all about the result.
The Numbers Were Not His
Mateer finished 18 of 26 for 155 yards with no touchdowns and no interceptions. Oklahoma totaled 238 yards, well under its season average of 321. Exactly one of the Sooners’ three touchdowns came from the offense, a 2-yard Lloyd Avant run that tied the game at 17.
The other two came from everywhere else. Danny Okoye blocked a punt and Dakoda Fields recovered it in the end zone. Peyton Bowen returned an interception 42 yards for a score with 10:07 left, the first pick-six of his career, putting Oklahoma up 24-17.
Arch Manning went 19 of 31 for 260 yards with three touchdowns and two interceptions. He tied the game at 24 on a 15-yard throw to Jermaine Bishop Jr. with 6:32 left, then threw the interception that ended it with 19 seconds on the clock.
Mateer Made The Only Throws That Mattered
Oklahoma took over at its own 39 with those 19 seconds. Mateer hit Isaiah Sategna for 13 yards and then for 20, both upheld on replay review, and that was the entire field position Sandell needed.
Those were the two best throws of his afternoon and he made them in the window where a bad one ends the game. A quarterback who goes quiet for three quarters and then produces 33 yards of offense in the last 19 seconds to beat the No. 1 team in the country has done his job.
Oklahoma had been 0-4-1 against a Texas team ranked No. 1 before Saturday, and this is its first Red River win since 2023. Texas led 17-10 at halftime and got outscored 17-7 in the fourth quarter.
The Flag Was Fine. The Leverage Is The Problem.
College football keeps treating rivalry taunting as an outrage when it has always been part of the appeal. Mateer did not touch a Texas player, and no confrontation and no discipline has been reported by anyone.
The sharper criticism is about standing. Oklahoma is 3-2 after this, with a loss at Michigan and a 41-13 beating at Georgia already banked, and it received 44 points in the others-receiving-votes section of Sunday’s AP poll without cracking the top 25. Texas fell from No. 1 to No. 7 at 4-1 and is still ranked while the team that beat it is not.
So the flag plant buys Mateer a week of noise and nothing else. Kentucky comes to Norman on Saturday at 5-1, fresh off its own top-10 upset. Beat that team too, or the taunt stays the highlight of Oklahoma’s season.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.