The SOC Van Pelt Report: Go Ahead and Mess With Texas, I Guess

The Longhorns and Cowboys both lost where nobody was looking. Your security team has the same blind spot.

At the State Fair of Texas, the smell of funnel cakes and corn dogs filled the air as the shadow of Big Tex loomed large, just like the expectations for the Texas Longhorns football program this season. Texas had the name-brand quarterback, a big win over Ohio State, and, oh yeah, they were ranked number one in the nation. 

Meanwhile, the Oklahoma Sooners have been floundering. Their anemic offense has been plagued by mistake after mistake after starting the season ranked inside the top ten. And yet, on Saturday, it was Sooner Magic that prevailed at The Cotton Bowl, with a walk-off field goal from 2025 Lou Groza Award winner Tate Sandell.

It turns out everything is bigger in Texas, including the face-plants. To make matters worse for Texas football fans, the Cowboys lost to a winless Buccaneers team on Thursday night. Two of the biggest brands in football, one state, and one shared problem: neither game was lost where everybody was looking.

All Eyes on Arch

Let’s start where everybody else did. Arch Manning entered the year as a preseason Heisman favorite, leading a preseason title contender, and last year, he earned $6.8 million, making him the most valuable college athlete in the country. Yet through four games, his passing numbers nearly mirrored those of Oklahoma’s John Mateer, a quarterback who was also being talked about a lot…for the wrong reasons. Mateer’s mistakes have come in the form of turnovers, and those turnovers have been loud. Despite that, coming into the Red River Rivalry, Mateer had more passing yards, more touchdowns, and a higher completion percentage than Arch Manning. That’s not the company you want to be in if you’re Texas.

Against the Sooners, he was fine for a half, throwing two long touchdowns to build a 10-point lead. Then came a pick-six and a late interception that handed Oklahoma the ball with 19 seconds left for the game-winning kick. It would be easy to blame the quarterback. And he does share a massive amount of blame here. But he wasn’t the reason Oklahoma was still in the game. 

The Unit Nobody Was Watching

Oklahoma’s offense didn’t register a first down in its first five possessions. What got the Sooners on the board was special teams: Danny Okoye blocked a punt in the end zone, and Dakoda Fields recovered it for a touchdown. That was the first touchdown Texas had allowed off a blocked punt since 2009, and it came two weeks after Texas allowed its first punt-return touchdown since 2013. The opening kickoff had already gone out of bounds at the 1-yard line, and one analyst traced the block to a simple misunderstanding of blocking responsibilities by a protector. So this was not a one-off. Special teams is a known vulnerability for Texas this season. To make matters worse, with 1:54 left and the game tied, kicker Gianni Spetic missed a 53-yard field goal that would have put Texas ahead. Two possessions later, Oklahoma’s Tate Sandell drilled a 47-yarder to win the game for the crimson and cream machine. 

Every Longhorn Needs a Cowboy

Same state, same week. A winless Tampa Bay team, starting an undrafted rookie in just his second start, beat the Cowboys 24-16. KaVontae Turpin fumbled a kickoff return, and Tampa Bay turned it into a field goal. The Cowboys also gave up 241 rushing yards, so the fumble was not the whole story. But Dak Prescott admitted afterward that Dallas was supposed to win.

Here’s How This Translates to Your Cybersecurity Strategy

Every security team has a quarterback. It’s the thing everyone watches: the core application servers, the customer database, the crown jewels. It gets the budget, the dashboards and the executive attention.

Then there’s your special teams: the forgotten test environment someone spun up in 2022, the integration nobody owns, the shadow IT app a department bought on a corporate card, the account that belonged to someone who left last spring. Nobody builds a game plan around them, so nobody notices when they stop holding up.

Attackers notice. Oklahoma’s offense couldn’t move the ball, and the Sooners still scored because someone had the wrong assignment on one block. Initial access works the same way: scan, find the unmonitored asset, walk in. 

Two more lessons from the Cotton Bowl. First, Texas had a warning. The punt-return touchdown two weeks earlier should have triggered a full review, and instead, the same unit failed again in a bigger moment. A near-miss on an overlooked asset is your warning shot, not a one-off. Second, the blocked punt was a responsibility mix-up, not a talent gap. In security terms, if the answer to “who owns this asset?” is “I thought you did,” you have a blocking-assignment problem.

So yeah, Texas’ quarterback threw a couple of interceptions in the worst moments. But the reason Oklahoma was in a position to win was because of Texas’s poor special teams play.