Kansas State had numbers on the Oklahoma football team most of the afternoon, with the most important being the 48 the Wildcat offense put on the scoreboard to pull off a major upset over the 5th-ranked and previously unbeaten Sooners.
After jumping out to a 10-0 advantage and a 17-7 first-quarter lead, the Sooners were outscored 41-7 over the next two quarters by a K-State offense the Oklahoma defense seemingly had no answer for. in its first two possessions.
Trailing by 25 points with 12 and a half minutes to go in the game, Oklahoma rallied behind quarterback Jalen Hurts for 18 unanswered points to pull within one score of Kansas State, 48-41, with just under two minutes remaining. That’s when things got really interesting.
The Sooners appeared to have recovered an onside-kick attempt inside the K-State 40-yard line, only to have the call reversed on replay and the ball awarded to the Wildcats when it was determined that the ball had touched an OU player before going the required 10 yards. With Oklahoma out of timeouts, Kansas State took a knee three times, and the celebration began.
The loss, OU’s first of the season, ended the Sooners’ nation-best 22-game winning streak in true road games and, while not eliminating them from national title contention, put their College Playoff hopes in serious jeopardy.
Hurts put up his usual big offensive numbers, accounting for four Oklahoma touchdowns, and CeeDee Lamb had five catches for 135 yards, including a 70-yard touchdown catch in the fourth quarter. But that was pretty much the extent of the Sooner offense, which did manage to pile up 497 yards, most of that coming in desperate catch-up mode in the fourth quarter.
Here are a dozen more numbers that tell the story of the game:
2 — Oklahoma’s two turnovers in the game (one lost fumble and an interception) resulted in 14 Kansas State points.
4 — This was the fourth straight game in which the Sooners failed to get a takeaway on offense.
6 — Touchdowns scored by Kansas State, the most scored against Oklahoma this season. All six K-State TDs were rushing touchdowns.
11:25 to 3:35 — Difference in time of possession in the third quarter, favoring Kansas State.
12 — Oklahoma’s total offensive output in the third quarter (out of 497 total yards for the game).
20 — Kansas State ran 20 more offensive plays than Oklahoma (73 to 53).
26 — Longest pass completed by K-State quarterback Skylar Thompson; also the yardage of the Wildcats’ longest running play (by James Gilbert, who rushed for 105 yards and averaged 8.0 yards per carry).
27.0 — Oklahoma’s punting average in the game on just two punts.
48 — The 48 points scored by Kansas State is the most scored against Oklahoma this season and 28 points more than the 19.4 scoring average the Sooners had allowed through the first seven games.
213 — Kansas State had 213 rushing yards in the game and the same number of passing yards for 426 yards of total offense.
491 — Jalen Hurts accounted for 491 of Oklahoma’s 497 yards of total offense (395 passing and 96 rushing).
1,848 — Number of days since Oklahoma’s last true road loss (Oct. 4, 2014 at TCU).