3 takeaways from Texas football’s crippling collapse vs. OK State

Yet another second-half collapse continued to cripple head coach Steve Sarkisian and the Texas football program in a very winnable game against head coach Mike Gundy and the No. 11 ranked Oklahoma State Cowboys. Despite holding a sizable 31-17 lead over Oklahoma State at one point in the second half on Oct. 22, Texas managed to fall short to the Pokes by the final score of 41-34.

This is the sixth road loss in Big 12 play for Sark during his time as the Texas head coach. It was also the fifth time that he’s coughed up a double-digit second-half lead since the start of last season.

All in all, Sark is now just 1-6 in Big 12 road games as the Texas head coach. And he has lost pretty much all confidence from the Longhorns faithful in his team’s ability to hold leads on the road against Big 12 opposition.

Yet, it looked like Texas had turned a corner heading into this one. Texas pulled out a gritty three-point win over the Iowa State Cyclones at home last weekend after dominating the West Virginia Mountaineers and Oklahoma Sooners.

Quinn Ewers and Texas football blow another second-half lead to fall short to Oklahoma State

Here’s a look at three takeaways from Texas’ crippling collapse of a loss to Oklahoma State on Oct. 22.

Injuries and penalties abound

Two of the most significant factors in this game for the Longhorns were injuries and penalties. Texas couldn’t seem to make it through a few plays in a row without getting flagged. Texas was flagged a whopping 14 times for 119 yards. Meanwhile, Oklahoma State wasn’t flagged a single time in this game.

I don’t remember seeing a game go down like this for Texas. And while I didn’t argue with a lot of the calls made in this one, there were some calls late that were critical to the outcome of this game (i.e. the Christian Jones holding call).

But injuries also hurt the Longhorns in this one. We continued to see just how important redshirt sophomore boundary corner Ryan Watts is to this secondary. He was solid in this game until he suffered an apparent lower-body injury. Watts was sidelined throughout the second half.

Senior safety Anthony Cook also suffered what Sark said after the game was a broken arm. That saw the walk-on sophomore safety Michael Taaffe get more key defensive snaps in a big game.

Watts and Cook are clearly both costly injuries for the Longhorns that allowed the Oklahoma State passing game open up in the second half to the tune of nearly 200 yards.