{"id":24870,"date":"2019-10-14T14:00:01","date_gmt":"2019-10-14T18:00:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordoncollegefootball.com\/?p=24870"},"modified":"2025-09-13T16:15:44","modified_gmt":"2025-09-13T20:15:44","slug":"red-river-rivalry-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/2019\/10\/14\/red-river-rivalry-review\/","title":{"rendered":"Red River Rivalry Review"},"content":{"rendered":"

The 115th<\/sup> renewal of Oklahoma vs Texas was the typical battle in the Cotton Bowl.\u00a0 Many questions were answered and a few remain.\u00a0 After the dust cleared, there wasn\u2019t much doubt which was the better team.\u00a0 What questions were answered and what questions remain?\u00a0 With that in mind, here is the Red River Rivalry review.<\/p>\n

Red River Rivalry Review<\/h2>\n

Overview<\/h3>\n

Clearly, the Sooners were the better team.\u00a0 Oklahoma outplayed Texas on both sides of the ball.<\/p>\n

A big factor in the outcome was Oklahoma’s dominance on offense, especially in the first half.\u00a0 If not for some questionable play calling and red zone turn overs, the Sooners would have had a 21-28 point lead at halftime. \u00a0With that in mind, in most instances missed opportunities such as those will cost a victory.\u00a0 Oklahoma was just good enough to overcome the miscues.<\/p>\n

The Oklahoma defense was unrecognizable from recent years.\u00a0 Clearly defensive coordinator, Alex Grinch\u00a0<\/strong>has the Sooners defense playing at a level not seen in Norman in many years.\u00a0 Oklahoma now has a defense to match their prolific offense.<\/p>\n

With respect to the Longhorns, they never quit despite playing catch up all afternoon.\u00a0 The Texas defense just couldn\u2019t get enough stops against Oklahoma\u2019s offense.<\/p>\n

Not The Same Oklahoma<\/h3>\n

Oklahoma, in a short time has developed a defense to match the offense.\u00a0 This was the biggest test to date for Oklahoma\u2019s new defense under Grinch.\u00a0 With that being said, Texas has a top 5 offense nationally.\u00a0 The Sooners defense shut that offense down for most of the game.\u00a0 Oklahoma dominated the line of scrimmage on both sides of the ball.<\/p>\n

With the defense playing at such a high level, Oklahoma can legitimately contend for a national championship.\u00a0 In previous years the Sooners had to play a near perfect game on offense and simply outscore everyone.\u00a0 With this being said, this takes so much pressure off of the offense to be perfect.<\/p>\n

Too Much Trash Talk<\/h3>\n

Texas talked trash through social media all week leading up to the game.\u00a0 Typically, the team that does all the trash talk is compensating for a lack of actual confidence.\u00a0 The Sooners didn\u2019t have much to say through social media.\u00a0 Oklahoma did their talking on the Cotton Bowl floor.\u00a0 Seldom does the team talking trash win these big games.\u00a0 Why would you ever want to give your hated rival extra motivation and bulletin board material!<\/p>\n

Positives vs Negatives for Oklahoma<\/h3>\n

To anyone watching the game, Oklahoma was clearly the better coached and more talented unit.\u00a0 The positives far outweighed the negatives for the Sooners.\u00a0 With that being said, Oklahoma played a far from perfect game. \u00a0A major factor that allowed Texas to remain close at halftime was Oklahoma\u2019s mistakes in the red zone, such as questionable play calling, poor decisions with the ball and turnovers by quarterback Jalen Hurts.<\/a> Oklahoma still needs to cut down on crucial penalties.<\/p>\n

In Hurts defense, he played a near perfect game in the second half.<\/p>\n

The Final Word<\/h3>\n

Oklahoma was dominant, the Sooners clearly controlled the line of scrimmage.\u00a0 The Sooner defense sacked Texas quarterback Sam Ehlinger<\/a> nine times Saturday.\u00a0 Ehlinger had been sacked only 5 times through the Longhorns first five games.\u00a0 Those games included a contest with SEC power LSU.<\/p>\n

On the other side of the ball every time the Longhorns pulled close in the second half, the Texas defense had no answer for Oklahoma\u2019s rushing attack and the receiving of CeeDee Lamb<\/a>. \u00a0Lamb finished the game with 10 receptions for 171 yards and three touchdowns.<\/p>\n

In all likelihood this was just the first of two battles between Oklahoma and Texas in 2019.\u00a0 These are clearly the best two football teams in the Big XII.\u00a0 Everyone should just get ready for a second Red River Showdown in December.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The 115th renewal of Oklahoma vs Texas was the typical battle in the Cotton Bowl.\u00a0 Many questions were answered and a few remain.\u00a0 After the dust cleared, there wasn\u2019t much doubt which was the better team.\u00a0 What questions were answered and what questions remain?\u00a0 With that in mind, here is the Red River Rivalry review. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3198,"featured_media":24874,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2,6,35584,35576],"tags":[4908,4471,18,2546,2193,184,600,613,86,37,5453,3763,2407,204],"class_list":["post-24870","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-big12","category-lsu-tigers","category-texas-longhorns","tag-2019-college-football-playoffs","tag-alex-grinch","tag-big-12","tag-big-12-championship","tag-ceedee-lamb","tag-cfb","tag-cotton-bowl","tag-jalen-hurts","tag-lsu-tigers","tag-oklahoma-sooners","tag-red-river-rivalry","tag-red-river-showdown","tag-sam-ehlinger","tag-texas-longhorns"],"modified_by":"Michael Kovacs, ADMIN","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24870","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3198"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24870"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24870\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":78567,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24870\/revisions\/78567"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24874"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24870"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24870"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24870"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}