Oklahoma football: How big is the Texas Tech game on Saturday?

How big is the Oklahoma football game at Texas Tech this weekend?

We may disagree on this, but let me just say it’s not the biggest of the remaining four games on the schedule, but it’s bigger than you may think.

Lincoln Riley will tell you that every game on the schedule is big — or important, if you like that terminology better — and at this time of year, that becomes increasingly so.

The Sooners are 10-2 in the Big 12 era against Texas Tech when playing at home in Norman, but just 6-4 when the game is played in Lubbock. That tells you something about the degree of difficulty most every week when facing an opponent in the offensive-minded Big 12, but it also underscores that OU is far from on easy street when it ventures to West Texas to match up with the Red Raiders.

It doesn’t have to be Halloween week to remind many Sooner football fans about the scary things that can occur when playing at Texas Tech. Between 2005 and 2009, Oklahoma lost in three consecutive trips to Texas Tech. And in the 2007 game, OU quarterback Sam Bradford suffered a concussion on the Sooners very first play from scrimmage and was forced to sit out the rest of the game.

Texas Tech took full advantage of Bradford’s injury, racing out to a 34-10 lead before the No. 3-ranked Sooners’ rallied with17 unanswered points to make the game close at the end before falling 34-27. In that same game, then-freshman running back DeMarco Murray dislocated his kneecap attempting to recover an onside kick and missed the remainder of the season.

The upset loss to the Red Raiders in 2007 knocked Oklahoma out of BCS national championship consideration. The Sooners were 9-1 entering the Texas Tech game.

It can be scary playing Texas Tech regardless of where the game is played. Who will forget the 2011 game with visiting Texas Tech? The Sooners were the third-ranked team in the country at the time and 6-0 on the season. Moreover, OU had only lost twice in 77 previous home games under head coach Bob Stoops and were in the midst of a 39-game home winning streak. All that went by the wayside on that fateful late fall evening, as Texas Tech jumped out to a 24-7 halftime lead and held on late for a stunning 41-38 victory.

Texas Tech came to Norman last season and gave Oklahoma a scare early, taking a 20-14 lead after one quarter. But that’s when the high-powered Sooner offense kicked into high gear, scoring 35 of the next 42 points on the way to a 49-27 victory.

“It’s week to week. You can play like the best team in the world one week and then not play your best if you lose your edge…We’re going to play a lot of good teams coming up, and we’re going to play in some tough venues and have adversity. We’re going to have to be ready to face it.” —Sooner head coach Lincoln Riley

The point of all this is, regardless of what the records or rankings say, Texas Tech has generally been a very formidable opponent for the Sooners.

Two of the last five games have been decided by eight or fewer points. On OU’s last trip to Lubbock, in 2016, it took 65 points for the Sooners to get by the Red Raiders. Baker Mayfield and Patrick Mahomes (now the starting quarterback of the NFL Kansas City Chiefs) of Texas Tech, locked up in an old-fashioned Texas shootout. The two QBs accounted for a combined 1,708 yards of offense and 12 touchdown passes (seven by Mayfield) with the Sooners coming out on top, but by only a narrow six-point margin.

So is this Saturday’s game with the Red Raiders big? You bet it is. Is it the biggest game Oklahoma has left on its regular-season schedule? Perhaps not, but it certainly is for this week. As long as the Sooners continue to win, the following week’s game becomes bigger and bigger…and it could very easily come down to the final weekend, when the Sooners go on the road to play West Virginia.

Following Saturday’s convincing victory over Kansas State, Lincoln Riley was asked how he was feeling about his team’s performance the past two weeks:

“It’s week to week,” the OU head coach said. ” You can play like the best team in the world one week and then not play your best if you lose your edge.

“We’ve taken some positive steps, and we have a decent idea of what we’re capable of, but we’ve got so many challenges ahead. We’re going to play a lot of good football teams coming up, including the one (this) week (at Texas Tech), we’re going to play in some tough venues and have adversity. We’re going to have to be ready to face it.”

With Texas Tech sitting with two conference losses but just a game back of one-loss Oklahoma, West Virginia and Texas, a loss to the Sooners would all but eliminate Texas Tech from Big 12 title contention. That fact alone, makes it a huge game for the Red Raiders, and they’ll have added motivation with the home crowd behind them. If that doesn’t translate to a big-game for the Sooners, who still have national championship aspirations and have to go into a hostile environment against a fired-up home team with its back pressing up against the wall, I don’t know what does.

A bigger game than the one between OU and Texas Tech, however, will be going on earlier in the day in Austin, Texas, where the Texas Longhorns will host West Virginia, both at 4-1 in the conference. A Texas win makes the Oklahoma-Texas Tech game even bigger, because the Sooners must win the game to keep pace with the first-place Longhorns, who already own the tiebreaker over Oklahoma.

A West Virginia win at Texas, however, sets up what could be the biggest game of the year, as far as the Big 12 title game is concerned, when the Sooners square off with West Virginia on Nov. 23. That assumes, of course that both OU and the Mountaineers take care of business (for the Sooners it is Tech, Oklahoma State and Kansas, with the latter two at home)  in the three weeks prior to that game.

Chaos could certainly ensue in the Big 12 and nationally between now and season’s end and change everything, but for the Sooners it’s as simple as play your best and treat every remaining game as the biggest of the season, which indeed they are if it results in a victory.

Good things are sure to come to those who keep winning.