Oklahoma football: Seven things Sooner fans should know before Red River Saturday

Oklahoma football has won seven of the last 10 games against Texas in the Red River rivalry series, including five of the last six.

There are a lot of things going against the Sooners in the 118th renewal of this classic college football series on Saturday. Among the biggest question marks if you’re an OU fan is who will be at quarterback for the Sooners.

Brent Venables, in his weekly press conference on Tuesday, nipped the elephant in the room by the bud, saying he was not ready to talk about any of the team’s injuries this early in the week. The conventional thinking right now, though, is that Dillon Gabriel won’t be available against the Longhorns on Saturday and backup Davis Beville will get the start.

The truth is, the Sooners are battling through a lot of injuries in addition to the one at the most important position and are coming off their third worst regular-season loss in the Big 12 era — Oklahoma lost by 33 points to Texas in 2005, and by 34 points to Oklahoma State in 2011.

And it couldn’t come at a worse time with the annual rivalry game against a very good Texas team dead ahead on the schedule.

Here are seven things fans should know ahead of Saturday’s Red River rivalry game:

• Texas leads in the overall series 62-50-5 and is the only Big 12 school that owns an overall winning record against the Sooners.
• This year’s game marks the first time since 1998 that neither team is ranked in the nation’s top 25 coming into the game and the first time since 2005 that Oklahoma has not been ranked on the second weekend in October when the game was played.
• Regardless of who starts at quarterback for either team Gabriel or Beville for OU and Quinn Ewers or Hudson Card for Texas), this will be the first time they have played in a Red River rivalry game.
• Oklahoma and Texas are tied with Notre Dame for fourth place in all-time college football wins, each with 931 entering Saturday’s games.
• The team that wins the turnover battle in the Oklahoma-Texas game is 13-7 since the 2000 season.
• The last nine games between OU and Texas have been decided by eight points or less. In the 15 games before that (1999 to 2013), every game was decided by at least two scores.
• Despite ranking 109 out of 131 FBS teams in total defense after five games, the Oklahoma defense ranks fifth nationally with 40 tackles for loss this season and 20th with 14 sacks. They’re going to need to add to these totals if they are going to beat Texas on Saturday.