Arch Manning and Texas walked into the Cotton Bowl with everything in front of them and walked out having lost both the game and the shine that had surrounded the season. In a 27-24 Red River Rivalry shocker, the Longhorns blew a No. 1 ranking against unranked Oklahoma, and Manning’s fourth-quarter collapse turned a bad loss into a brutal one.
The finish came apart fast. With the game tied 17-17, Manning tried to extend a play, drifted into trouble and floated a pass that Peyton Bowen snagged and returned 42 yards for a touchdown. That turnover handed Oklahoma the lead, and it came after Texas had already lived too dangerously on offense and special teams.
“I think we beat ourselves a lot,” Arch said. “(On the Pick Six) I was trying to extend the play. I missed high, and I can’t do that backed up in our end to give them the lead.”
The Longhorns still had a chance to recover, but Manning handed it away again on Texas’ final possession. With the score tied 24-24 and 19 seconds left, he forced a throw into tight coverage, and Oklahoma came away with the interception. Four plays later, the Sooners capped the upset with a walk-off field goal on the final play.
It was the kind of ending Texas never wanted to see and Oklahoma could hardly believe after a rough two weeks of its own. The Sooners had given up 41 points in an ugly loss at Georgia, but they found enough on Saturday to turn Manning’s mistakes into their biggest moment of the year.
Texas’ sloppiness started long before the final two picks. Early in the game, Manning fired a delivery that struck an offensive lineman in the side of the helmet.
On one first-half drive, the Longhorns surrendered two sacks and then had a punt blocked in the end zone for a touchdown. Even after going to halftime with a 10-point lead, they came out flat in the third quarter and strung together five possessions that lasted four, three, three, three and two plays.
The loss also landed with a bang in the history of the rivalry. Texas entered as an 8-point favorite, but the result became the third-biggest upset in the 127-year history of the Red River Rivalry, behind Oklahoma’s win as a 20-point underdog in 1996 and Texas’ win as a 17-point underdog in 1989.
Oklahoma had been 0-4-1 against a No. 1-ranked Texas team, but that streak finally meant nothing on a day when Manning’s performance swallowed the storyline. He had already been mostly ordinary this season outside of the fourth quarter in the comeback win over Ohio State. On Saturday, he was far worse than ordinary, and the Heisman chatter went from loud to dead in a hurry.
Normally, a quarterback who throws three touchdowns in a rivalry game leaves with praise. Manning left with two late interceptions, a ruined unbeaten season and a very different kind of conversation around him.
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