Texas head coach Steve Sarkisian is not dressing Red River up as some routine October date, and he is not pretending Oklahoma’s 2-2 record makes this week comfortable.

If anything, the Texas coach is doing the opposite.

He is reminding his own locker room what a wounded rival looks like when the Cotton Bowl calendar hits.

“I can promise you nobody’s overlooking anybody in this game,” Sarkisian said Monday.

“Our guys watched (college football) Saturday. They know what it’s about. The guys that have been part of this game know what it’s about.”

That is the correct public posture for a No. 1 team playing Oklahoma in Dallas. The rankings say Texas is the standard right now. The rivalry says none of that will matter for 60 minutes if the Longhorns show up flat. Sarkisian knows the difference. He also knows the version of Oklahoma walking into this game is more dangerous in one specific way than a confident, undefeated team would be.It is desperate.

Sarkisian did not dance around that part either. He reached back to Texas’ own recent history and put the Sooners in that same emotional category.

“We were in the same situation a year ago. We were just coming off of losing to Florida. We were a two-loss team. We were a desperate football team and found a way to win and played a really good second half. So we know what it is.”

That comparison works because the parallel is real.

A year ago, Texas limped toward the Cotton Bowl after a 29-21 loss to Florida dropped the Longhorns to 3-2. Oklahoma was undefeated and favored. For Texas, the math was already getting ugly. Another loss in Dallas would have pushed the playoff conversation toward the edge. Arch Manning was off to a rough start to his tenure as the Longhorns' starting quarterback. What followed was a desperate team playing like one, especially in the second half, and finding a way through a rivalry game that was supposed to lean the other direction.

Now the roles are flipped in tone, if not exact record.

Oklahoma is 2-2 after a month of offensive dysfunction and a 41-13 collapse at Georgia. The Sooners are unranked in both major polls for the first time all season. John Mateer is under more scrutiny than at any point since he arrived. The offensive line has been a problem. The run game has been near the bottom of the country. In the broader playoff picture, Oklahoma cannot afford many more wrong turns.

That is the definition of a dangerous rival. Not healthy. Not humming. Dangerous.

Sarkisian’s point was aimed at his own roster more than at Norman. That is the part Oklahoma fans should pay attention to. He is not handing the Sooners public respect for charity. He is trying to keep a top-ranked team from buying the wrong storyline. The wrong storyline is that Oklahoma’s bad month has already decided Red River. The right one is that rivalry games are built for teams with something to prove, and right now Oklahoma has more to prove than Texas does.

That does not mean the Sooners are suddenly well-built for this matchup. They still have to protect the football. They still have to create a run game. They still have to survive the physical standard Texas is going to bring up front. Desperation without execution is just emotion.

Oklahoma has talked the right way coming out of the bye. Mateer has owned the poor production. Venables has refused to lower the standard. None of that changes the ball until Friday and Saturday look different.

From the Texas side, though, Sarkisian’s warning is easy to understand. His team has the ranking, the résumé edge, and the recent Red River leverage. Texas has also already lived the other side of this. It knows what it feels like to enter Dallas needing the day more than the opponent does. That memory is useful. It keeps a favorite from confusing the polls with the matchup.

This is where the week actually sits. Texas is No. 1 in both the AP and Coaches polls. Oklahoma is coming in cold, unranked, and short on offensive trust. In a neutral-site rivalry game, that combination can create the exact conditions for a short-handed team to play above itself for one afternoon.

Sarkisian sees it. He should. He lived a version of it a year ago.

Oklahoma being desperate is not a compliment. It is a condition. The Sooners are playing like a team that has already spent its margin for error. That can produce panic, or it can produce urgency. Texas is preparing for the second possibility.

For once, the favorite is saying the quiet part out loud. Oklahoma needs this game in a way Texas does not. That will not score a touchdown by itself.

It does mean Dallas is not going to feel like a formality for the top team in the country.

Source: Yahoo Sports