Oklahoma Coach Brent Venables Explains What 'We Probably Should Have' Done at End of Tennessee Game

After recovering an onside kick, when Oklahoma running back Xavier Robinson broke away on a long run with less than two minutes to play on Saturday night at Tennessee and the Sooners in control of a two-point advantage, everyone assumed he would score the touchdown that clinched OU’s first road win over a ranked opponent since 2019.

Turns out it was a little more complicated than that.

Instead of scoring uncontested, Robinson took a knee inside the UT 1-yard line. Vols coach Josh Heupel called the second of his three timeouts. 

And then the Sooners almost inexplicably scored on the very next play anyway as quarterback John Mateer plunged nearly untouched into the end zone. Following the extra point, the Sooners expanded their lead to 33-24 — a nine-point cushion with 1:46 left on the clock.

Game over, right? Not quite.

Heupel still had one timeout and 116 seconds to work with.

The Vols marched quickly in position for a field goal that cut it to 33-27 with 47 seconds remaining. Heupel still had one timeout. Quarterback Joey Aguilar had thrown for nearly 400 yards. And now OU had to defend one more onside kick — which the Sooners did when Ivan Carreon jumped on it, allowing OU coach Brent Venables to secure perhaps the signature win of his four seasons at the helm in Norman.

Conventional wisdom suggests that making Tennessee burn its final timeout on defense on the goal line — following Robinson’s heady play by asking Mateer to fall on the ball before attempting to score once or even twice and running the clock down to under 30 seconds — might have been the safer play. But maybe not. Nothing wrong with having a two-score lead with less than two minutes to play.

Venables offered a detailed explanation of how the whole thing unfolded on Sunday during his playback show, "Sooner Football With Brent Venables." 

“Yeah, we're not supposed to score that that fast,” Venables said of Robinson’s surprising breakaway after Robert Spears-Jennings recovered the first onside kick. “I know we don't score here because he goes down, but … they got the whole team down there. These guys are out here (in the secondary) with no help.” 

Venables said coaching the runners to take a dive near the goal line — remember Samaje Perine taking a knee iat the 5 nstead of scoring against Oklahoma State so the Sooners could kneel on the ball and run out the clock to guarantee victory — is something the players are taught.

“We do ‘football school’ once to twice a week, and we watch other people in these exact situations, in both college football and the NFL, and how you win, how you can close a game out: four-minute situation, two-minute situation, you're talking offense, you're talking defense, and how you go win. 

“And this situation here, so the score here is 26-24. so we got an opportunity to go up by two scores. And we kicked this around, kicked it around, and we didn't want to leave them any time on the clock and only being up one score. 

“And so at the end of the day, we probably should have ran it one more time and fell down. Here (on Mateer’s TD) they end up letting us go. And we said, ‘Hey, they're probably going to try to let us score,’ but we know if we go up by nine, we'd have a great chance to go win the game.

“But could have probably ran off a little bit more time, done it a second time, and try to go score on third and fourth down. They probably wouldn't have let us score, quote-unquote, on third down and fourth down. But on second down, ‘Hey, let's let them score. If they don't go down, then let's do everything we can to put the whole team up there and stop them from scoring on third and fourth down. So that's kind of what you had.”