“F*ck it. I’m voting us number one.”

That was my text to Scipio as the game ended yesterday. Part of my thinking wasn’t really thinking at all. I had just watched the greatest Texas-Oklahoma game I’ve ever seen, and I was fucking exhilarated. But after the dust settled, both polls have us number one. Deservedly so.

This is a different Texas team and one I haven’t seen since Vince Young was our QB. They don’t rattle. They don’t quit. And they always play hard. Always. Every play.

I can’t give enough credit to Greg Davis. He was fantastic. This wasn’t sandbagging. This was creating a gameplan to attack your opponent’s weaknesses. He maximized our talent, and that becomes even more important when you just might not be that talented. By spreading out OU’s defense and moving Jordan Shipley around, he kept the Sooners from being able to double Shipley and Quan Cosby.

Cosby and Shipley aren’t the biggest or fastest guys around, but they catch everything, they block relentlessly and they don’t take plays off. And they’re great at finding openings against a zone defense.

When Texas lost to Texas Tech in Lubbock back in 2002 I blamed the offense. Our injury depleted defense could not stop Tech so they needed the offense to control the clock and shorten the game. They didn’t, and we lost. My point is that offenses and defenses have to work together. Oklahoma’s do not.

Their offense will try to score as quickly as possible without taking into account whether or not their defense is fatigued. It caught up to them in the end. Their pass rush wilted, and their pursuit was nowhere to be found.

When Texas got first and goal, they could bring in a two pairs of fresh legs in 300 pound Roy Miller and 255 pound Cody Johnson. Johnson’s last two touchdowns were through holes I could have run through. Texas just blew holes through the tired OU defensive line.

We won the both the turnover battle and the kicking game. You win those two, and you’re in good shape. Our guys on special teams know their roles. Whether it was Curtis Brown tackling the punter short of the first down on the fake, or Eddie Jones making a great block on the kickoff to spring Jordan Shipley.

We had some breakdowns on defense, no question about it. We’re very young in the secondary so there will be more breakdowns to come. But we made OU one dimensional (not that hard, really) and didn’t allow them to sit on lead and control the gameclock. Our front seven is as good as any in the country, and it’s the best I’ve seen at Texas since the early 80s.

We’ve now won 3 out of the last 4 against OU, but that’s not enough. We need to finish this thing and win the conference. That should be the goal. If we do that, everything else will fall into place.

We’re all going to have so much fun watching this team.