Can Oklahoma salvage a trip to the Big 12 title game after loss to Baylor? | College Football Enquirer

Yahoo Sports’ Dan Wetzel and Pete Thamel, and Sports Illustrated’s Pat Forde discuss Oklahoma’s loss to Baylor, and debate if the Sooners have what it takes to finish the season strong enough to make the Big 12 Championship Game.

Video Transcript

DAN WETZEL: Let's start quickly with Oklahoma, which really is not-- they're having a fine season, undefeated. But go to Baylor, score 7 points and use two touchdowns-- bad game for Oklahoma. However, they can still win the Big 12.

And they could still they-- they're going to have two against Bedlam-- or at least one against Bedlam. They may end up-- we'll get to how this thing gets breaking out. How much-- but if they play like this, they're not doing anything. But they could conceivably look and go, hey, we lost on the road to a very good team. That may or may not-- if they're-- if they end up 12 and 1, that may or may not be enough to get them past Cincinnati. It might. We'll see. Pat, thoughts on the Sooners?

PAT FORDE: Ha, ha, ha. That's my first thought on the Sooners. You know, this is a bit of a combo thought with them and Texas. But wow. For them both to get this comeuppance on the same day, I think the Survivor 8 of the Big 12 had to have a little bit of mean-spirited joy in seeing what happened-- and not just seeing Oklahoma lose pretty darn emphatically to Baylor, and then Texas absolutely throw up on itself against Kansas.

But the way it went down with a little bit of rub in the face of Lincoln Riley and the Sooners at the end, with the crowd storming the field with three seconds left, and then they get the crowd off, and they got to bring Oklahoma out of the locker room, and they got to do one more play-- and what's the last play? A field goal for Baylor.

Dave Aranda said, well, yes, we're thinking about point differential and all that. I think the rest of the Big 12 was thinking, eat it, Oklahoma.

[LAUGHTER]

I think-- you know, point differential or not. And then Lincoln Riley did not take it well. I think that there was probably a great deal of joy in Stillwater, in Ames, in Manhattan, in Lubbock, in Fort Worth, and everywhere in the Big 12 seeing that happen.

Because, first of all, Oklahoma's been a paper tiger all year. We've talked about it. But then for the offense to completely just flat line against a good defense for sure, but to flat line like that and get beaten and really to have some humiliation served at the end, too, I think the Big 12 probably enjoyed that.

PETE THAMEL: I mean, the misery index for Oklahoma has not been this high in a-- since their last playoff loss, right? Like, it's been a very, very long time since Oklahoma's-- it was the worst yardage output in Lincoln Riley's five-year tenure. They scored a jump touchdown with two minutes to go. So they really scored once in 57 minutes, couldn't move the ball, needed a quarterback change.

And it felt a little bit like Baylor going forward has a trajectory that nobody could have expected. And I'm not saying Baylor is a better program next year. And look, they'll never be favored to win the Big 12 next season because the brands get favor. They get favored every year. Caleb Williams will be the Heisman. All the same storylines will get refreshed.

But if you're a Baylor fan and you see the jump that Dave Aranda's program-- really a leap that Dave Aranda's program took from year 1 to year 2, they were pound for pound better than the Oklahoma Sooners on Saturday. They were [INAUDIBLE] better in every facet. They pushed them around. They ran for something like 300 yards. They outgained them by nearly 200 yards. They just absolutely physically mauled them on both lines of scrimmage.

And it was just a-- it was just a wire to wire whooping. There's no other way to say it. And Lincoln Riley has shown that once a year his team will get ragdolled by an underdog. It'll be very interesting to see how Oklahoma responds. Because Iowa State has been their kryptonite, and they go to Norman next week. And then they close at Oklahoma State and will be an underdog in that game and potentially like a 5-point underdog or so. Oklahoma State is constructed-- defense first, strong line of scrimmage-- the same way that Baylor is constructed.