Chaos in the Cotton Bowl: Oklahoma Topples No. 1 Texas 27-24 on Tate Sandell's Walk-Off Kick

Oklahoma's offense gained 238 yards. Texas' gained 382. Texas threw three touchdown passes; Oklahoma threw none. Texas held the Sooners to 83 rushing yards and 2 of 13 on third down.

Oklahoma won anyway.

That's the Red River Rivalry for you — a game that doesn't care about your stat sheet, your ranking or your preseason expectations. Tate Sandell's 47-yard field goal split the uprights as time expired Saturday afternoon in front of 92,100 at the Cotton Bowl, and unranked Oklahoma (3-2, 1-1 SEC) took down No. 1 Texas 27-24. It's the Sooners' first win over the AP's top-ranked team since 2007, and it's the loudest result of a Saturday that also featured Georgia winning in Tuscaloosa.

How Texas built a 10-point cushion

For a half, this looked like the Longhorns' day. Arch Manning hit Cam Coleman for a 41-yard touchdown midway through the first quarter, a one-play strike that came right after a short Oklahoma punt. Coleman finished with five catches for 110 yards — his first 100-yard game in burnt orange.

Then came the first sign of trouble. Pinned deep, Texas lined up to punt early in the second quarter, and Danny Okoye blocked it. Dakoda Fields scooped it in the end zone, and a game in which Oklahoma had done nothing offensively was suddenly tied 7-7.

Texas answered like a No. 1 team should. Manning found Ryan Wingo for a 34-yard touchdown on a nine-play, 75-yard drive, and Gianni Spetic's 23-yard field goal with 12 seconds left before halftime made it 17-7. Spetic's kick kept him perfect on the year — the first Texas kicker to open a season 8-for-8 on field goals since 2008.

The Texas defense, meanwhile, was suffocating. Coming into the fourth quarter, the Longhorns had held Oklahoma without an offensive touchdown on 32 straight drives dating to the 2024 season.

The fourth-quarter flip

Sandell's 53-yarder in the third quarter cut it to 17-10, and then the game turned on its head in roughly four and a half minutes of game clock.

Lloyd Avant punched in a 2-yard run 12 seconds into the fourth quarter to tie it at 17 — finally snapping that 32-drive streak. The drive got help from a pass-interference flag on third-and-9 that moved the ball to the 2. Avant was Oklahoma's best offensive weapon all day, rushing 10 times for 72 yards, including a 42-yard burst in the third quarter.

Then Peyton Bowen happened. On a second-and-13 from the Texas 20, Manning's throw went right to the Oklahoma safety at the 42, and Bowen ran it all the way back. Pick-six, 24-17 Sooners, 10:07 to go. Three Oklahoma touchdowns: one on a blocked punt, one on an interception return, one by an offense that had been shut out of the end zone for more than a season's worth of drives against this defense.

Manning's answer — and the last mistake

To Manning's credit, he responded immediately. Texas went 75 yards in seven plays, keyed by a 42-yard strike to Coleman, and Manning found Jermaine Bishop Jr. for a 15-yard touchdown — Bishop's first career touchdown catch — to tie it at 24 with 6:32 left.

The Longhorns got another look after an Oklahoma punt and drove to the Sooners' 35, but Spetic's 53-yard try with 1:54 left came up empty. His first miss of the season couldn't have come at a worse time.

Texas got one more chance. A pass-interference penalty pushed the Longhorns to the Oklahoma 49 with under a minute left. Then, with 24 seconds remaining and Omarion Robinson in his face, Manning's pass was intercepted by Courtland Guillory at the Oklahoma 39.

That was all John Mateer needed. He found Isaiah Sategna III for 13 yards and then 20 more, to the Texas 28. After a short loss and a Texas timeout, Sandell lined up from 47 with three seconds left. Good. Ballgame.

Think about the sequence for a second. Texas had the ball, a tie game, a pass-interference gift and the best quarterback on the field. Nineteen seconds later, Oklahoma was celebrating. The Sooners' winning drive covered 31 yards in four plays — and one of those plays only counted because replay overturned an incompletion into a 13-yard catch.

Manning finished 19-of-31 for 260 yards, three touchdowns and two interceptions. Mateer went 18-of-26 for just 155 yards — but none of his passes went to the other team. On a day decided by special teams and turnovers, that was the difference.

The defense deserved better

It'd be easy to bury the Texas defense in the rubble, and that would be wrong. Colin Simmons had three tackles for loss, two sacks and a forced fumble. Rasheem Biles made a game-high 12 tackles. Texas logged nine tackles for loss as a team and held Oklahoma to 4.2 yards per play.

The problem is that the defense kept handing the ball back to an offense that went 3-of-14 on third down, and to a special-teams unit that gave up a touchdown on a blocked punt. A No. 1 team can survive one of those. Not all of them, not in Dallas.

Steve Sarkisian, who calls the Longhorns' plays, isn't budging. Asked after the game whether he'd hand off play-calling duties, he said there was "not a chance." Expect that answer to be tested all week in Austin.

Where the dust settles

Texas (4-1, 1-1 SEC) still has the roster of a contender and a soft-looking stretch ahead: a three-game homestand that opens Oct. 17 against No. 16 Florida. A single October loss doesn't end a playoff push, and the Red River loser has recovered before.

But the No. 1 ranking is gone, and the conversation about who owns the top spot shifts toward Athens. A few hours after the Cotton Bowl emptied, Georgia beat Alabama 20-17 in front of 100,077 at Bryant-Denny Stadium on Peyton Woodring's 23-yard field goal with 5:25 left — the Bulldogs' first win in Tuscaloosa since 2007.

Oklahoma, meanwhile, flips its season. The Sooners walked into the Cotton Bowl at 2-2 and unranked. They walked out having beaten the best team in the country with 238 yards of offense, two defensive and special-teams touchdowns and a kicker who didn't blink. Style points don't count in October. Neither do total yards.