The Oklahoma offense did something Saturday it had rarely done all season: it showed improvement. If you ignore the last 4 minutes of last week's game in Kentucky, it's something they've actually done two weeks a row now. As much criticism as John Mateer, Ben Arbuckle, and the offense in general have faced this year, they've shown equally as much toughness and tenacity to keep the faith and find a way to keep getting better one game at a time. Would it have been nice if they had been doing that a little quicker, before OU lost 3 games and found themselves with a wooden nickel's worth of a chance to make the Playoff? Yes. Does it say a lot about who they are as people, and the type of culture Brent Venables has created inside the building? Also yes. It's easy to dig deep and do the extra work to get better when you believe you are knocking on the door of being elite; it is much, much harder when all hope seems lost and the whole Internet agrees you are the football equivalent of a wet cat turd.
More than once Saturday afternoon, even up until the final moments, Mateer had the opportunity to make a devastating mistake trying to play outside himself as he has so often this season. He didn't. Instead, he stayed calm, and did only what was asked of him, while sprinkling in enough Mateer Magic to stay true to himself in the process. The result was arguably his best game in a Sooner uniform. Postgame, he credited his confidence to waking up in the middle of the night the night before, and the thought, "forgive yourself," coming to him immediately. A reminder that, "...nothing matters less than the last play," he said. He described it as a powerful, even spiritual, moment, and one that had a profound impact on him. He played like it.
It's one of the Great Truths of College Football: the distance between a disappointing season that gets everyone fired and competing for a National Championship can be, literally, inches. This is even more true in the NIL and Transfer Portal era. There is more talent more spread out than there has ever been, which begets unseen levels of parity, which begets unseen levels of chaos in a sport already defined by it.
As much as fans in Norman have clamored for changes to be made at quarterback, offensive coordinator, offensive line coach, and/or head coach after a 4-3 start, they are far from the only fanbase having a hard time this season. Oregon, a very popular preseason National Champion pick, is also 4-3, and now their message boards are aflame with calls for Dan Lanning's job–the same Dan Lanning that many Sooner fans thought OU should have hired instead. USC just lost again, making them a relative non-factor for the fifth season in a row under Lincoln Riley, and his buyout almost makes him unfirable. Texas was ranked #1 in the country three weeks ago, then blew leads in back to back games (and almost did it again against Ole Miss), and Sark's time in Austin is on weekly life support.
Welcome to the modern era of college football. There are only a handful of fanbases happy with where their team is at right now, and even they might be staring down a different story as soon as next week with the way things have been going this season. This is isn't 1985 anymore. 12-0 or 11-1 regular seasons are going to become increasingly rare, and a pretty unrealistic expectation for 25+ fanbases every single season. It is going to be a dog fight to get to 10-2 or even 9-3 for some really talented teams this year, and increasingly so every year moving forward. Chaos is the new order, and you might as well embrace it because it's coming whether you like it or not.