Andy & Ari On3 - Texas DOMINATES Oklahoma in Red River Rivalry | Quinn Ewers, Longhorns handle Sooners in Dallas

Episode Date: October 13, 2024

Wendy’s New Saucy Nuggs take the Crispy and Spicy Nuggs you love and turn them up to 11. Choose between flavors like Buffalo. Honey BBQ. Garlic Parm. Or, if you’re a real heat seeker, try Spicy Ghost Pepper, only on Wendy’s signature Spicy Nuggs. Andy and Ari watched Texas destroy Oklahoma on Saturday. The Sooners’ defense started strong, but with Oklahoma unable to move the ball at all, eventually Texas took over and ran away with the win. What’s next for Texas with Georgia on the horizon?   Meanwhile, can Oklahoma find a way to score with games against South Carolina, Ole Miss, Missouri, Alabama and LSU in the future? Hosts: Andy Staples, Ari WassermanProducer: River Bailey

Well, you just heard the cannon. Texas 34, Oklahoma 3. The Longhorns are cavorting on the field with the gold hat. The Sooners taking showers and probably trying to forget this ever happened. Yeah, and you also saw how I would react in any crisis scenario. I would just quiver and cry. And hide. I didn't really cover myself in glory there either, by the way.

I hope the camera picked me flinching. But you know who didn't flinch? The Texas Longhorns. Yeah. We spent a lot of time coming into the week, Andy, you know, coming up with scenarios where this weird setting of state fair behind us, fried food paradise, you know, the weirdness of whatever happens here on this field could happen again. 17 point spread. We thought, hey, that's a lot for a rivalry game. And it turns out that Texas is a national championship contender and maybe the number

one team in the country and Oklahoma is deeply flawed. Yeah. And look, Oklahoma's defense came out looking great, great game plan. I trust Oklahoma's defense the rest of the way. But Oklahoma's offense could do nothing. Now granted, they are without their best five wide receivers. Their offensive line is not what they hoped it would be. I don't know that you can pin this on Michael Hawkins Jr.

I don't think it would have mattered if Jackson Arnold was in there. They've got to figure out a way to move the ball because their schedule is brutal from here on out. Texas is great, and Texas may be the best team that they play all year, but they still have to play Alabama. They still have to play Missouri. They still have to play LSU. They play South Carolina next week. South Carolina almost beat Alabama today. And Georgia is up 34-24 on Mississippi State as we're doing this. But as much as I would love to just come up here and gloat about being on what people might perceive as the right side of the Michael Hawkins-Jackson-Arnold discussion, the fact of the matter is that Oklahoma and what we saw out there had nothing to do with Michael Hawkins.

There's no right side to that because they have no way to evaluate when they have five receivers down and the line just not where it needs to be. So you're in a situation where you have a personnel issue, and if that personnel issue is predicated on absence of Burks, who wasn't out there today, or the line that they knew coming into the year might have some issues, there's no fixing that on a week-to-week basis. You are what you are at that point. maybe Brenton Venables and this is what

you were trying to tell me um had no choice but to make the quarterback switch we want to talk so much about quarterbacks but really this Oklahoma team from a roster standpoint isn't where it needs to be no at this point to compete in this and you just saw a a roster that's built to compete for a national championship, that's built to compete for an SEC championship. That's Texas' team. Texas plays Georgia next week. Texas versus Georgia will give us a great idea of what Texas looks like against another team that probably will make the playoff.

Yeah. And, you know, not to be corny. I'm a corny dude, Andy. But, like, we are at the fair. Yep. That's going to be the real fair fight next week in Austin when you see those two teams play. Corny, corny dogs.

We're feeling the energy. I'm in a point right now where the Oklahoma stuff is so much more fascinating to me than the Texas stuff. And that's not usually how it goes. Because we know Texas is good. Texas is good. News flash, everybody. You got your analysis.

But what does Oklahoma do? Because the schedule only gets harder. And my thing about this is, look, Brent Venables, you're the head coach. Seth Luttrell, Joe John Finley, you're the guys in charge of the offense. You get paid a lot of money. It's time to earn it because you will be facing a bigger challenge than probably any coaching staff in America for the next six weeks. Absolutely.

And you're in a two-pronged situation there, Andy, because you and I view evaluation and big thought differently, and the same, but sometimes differently. You like to, because they're important, games matter, think about what can Oklahoma do to fix before they play these five games that they could lose. I am also at the point, too, where it's like, it's that, but also how do you properly evaluate the direction of your program

and who is leading it if neither quarterback has been given an ample opportunity with players that can lift them because they're both really young. It's not like we know beyond the shadow of a doubt that Jackson Arnold stinks and isn't the guy. If you have to make a decision, if somebody comes into you at the end of the season and says, well, you got to pick one of us or one of us is transferring. How do you do it? I don't know what you do.

How do you do it? But that's the conundrum they face. And there are things that they have to start planning on. Like the offensive line has to be fixed by next year. Or this will just happen again. Yeah. This will happen over and over in this league. And I think Oklahoma fans got tired of hearing people say,

well, the SEC is going to be tougher than the Big 12. Look, the teams that Oklahoma put on the field the last 15 years or so would be fine in the SEC. This particular team is not deep enough. And whether that's bad luck with the receivers it most certainly is or you didn't plan well enough in developing your offensive line which is more of a not just this year problem and it's a really bizarre thing to be in the scenario too because we've been so programmed that in this game every single year we learn which one of the two teams on that field

is going to be the supreme force in your conference. That's not the case this year. That game for Texas is next year. But the weirder part, Andy, is we've also been programmed to expect that Oklahoma, no matter what happens, is going to have a really good quarterback and have a bunch of offensive playmakers that can break open a game for you even when that quarterback isn't playing well. And now they've totally flipped the paradigm.

And now their defense is really good, but their offense cannot score. And I know that Texas might have one of the best defenses in the country. We just got done watching a team that I think is probably the favorite right now, or depending on what Ohio State and Oregon do later, the favorite to win the national championship at this moment. But that offense I don't think can score on anybody, really, in high numbers. They might be able to score 14, 17, 20, but not enough. Think about North Carolina's edges are legit.

They must be in Alabama today. Like they're going to give you problems if you're not careful. Now, are they going to be as mind-numbingly efficient as Texas' offense after the first few series? Probably not. Your defense is probably going to be able to create some turnovers. But think about the Herculean effort put forth by Oklahoma's defense for a quarter and a half of this game.

Yeah, I mean, honestly, we were at a place in the press box for the first quarter, quarter and a half, where it's like, okay, if Oklahoma could make one offensive play here, we might be into a weird game, another weird Red River rivalry. Yeah, yeah. And it's just they couldn't do it. And I don't know that I love the kicking of the field goal on fourth and four on the opening drive when you have a chance to be like, hey.

But truth is, I don't think they would have gotten it. I don't think it would have mattered. It wouldn't have mattered. So, like, and Texas did not play well today. Right. That's a scary point. 31-point win, and I think Sark will tell you there's plenty to correct after this game.

And, of course, Quinn Ewers I thought was rusty for the first two quarters, especially, maybe the whole game, depending on how you want to view it. I did feel like their depth of playmakers took over. I think when Gunnar Helm took it down the right sideline earlier in the second quarter, you're like, all right, this is – That's probably it. They're starting to warm up here. Yeah, and like also to the Silas Bolden, the athletic play that he made

falling on the fumble. These are the types of play – like that play will not be talked about. But I don't think that people appreciate how hard that was to land. He had about – He had a foot of room. Right. And he was running full speed to collect the ball and land in the end zone and he did it like that's what national championship level teams have and oklahoma for so many years

had those dudes that could shift the paradigm of a game even when they weren't playing well so you want to get i mean i think i should write a column or probably will at some point this week about the hard situation that Venables is in when it comes to picking one now later on yep but the truth is is that they don't have playmakers right some are injured some are non-existent but they don't have them no and they've got to figure out what to do how to make it work the rest of the way with a very difficult schedule and I think you know reality's starting to settle in probably on the Oklahoma fan base, which we saw streaming out of here really with about 11 minutes to go in the game. Last year was different because Texas was probably a better team than Oklahoma last year overall.

But Oklahoma came in here and won the game on that day. And I think that gave a little bit of a false sense of security like, okay, Texas is really good this year, but it doesn't matter. This is Texas OU. Absolutely, yeah. So, you know, know here we are we're at the fair we got some fried food that's good oh yeah fried deep fried ribs we got I'll covered in spicy cheeto dust you're gonna have to wake me up for the show tonight I think was amazing yeah took four bites of corn dog, and I didn't hit any dog.

That's how big this was. There's cheese on the top. There's melted cheese on the top. Then you get to the dog. Awesome spectacle. Happy that we saw it. I think we learned more about Oklahoma than we did about Texas, but probably knew where both of these teams stood coming into it.

It's a nice little step up or set up for next weekend in Austin, and then, of course, what Oklahoma does moving forward to try to rectify what's going on here will be interesting to watch. The job ahead of the Oklahoma coaching staff is probably as difficult as the job of my digestive system on that Cheeto dust coated Korean corndog. This is year three for Brent Venables. I don't want to go down that road. We don't need to go down that road yet, but they've got to figure some stuff out. This is why I say the games matter. What happens the rest of the season matters

because you have to make that determination if you're Oklahoma. The thing about Oklahoma, and this is what I keep telling the fans of the other SEC schools about Oklahoma that they don't understand, is Oklahoma will not tolerate mediocrity. It will not take long. And that's why they got mad at me. For them to fix it if they need to fix it. So whatever needs to be fixed is going to have to be determined

over these next few weeks, and they'll have to see, are you good enough to fix it, Brent Venables and your staff, or do they have to change the staff? Do they have to change the personnel? A lot of questions are going to be raised, hopefully answered over the next few weeks, hopefully not more questions. That would be a scary part.

You can probably hop on to Soonerscoop.com right now. You'll be reading a lot about the offensive coaching staff. You'll be reading about personnel. It might be a combination of both. But crossroads with the quarterback position, crossroads with personnel, with assistants, everything. It's a pretty important part of Oklahoma's viewpoint on this season, and we'll see how Brent Venables handles that.

Good luck to you. It ain't going to be easy, but that is what the money is for.