I’ve only owned two cars in my life.

My current car is a Nissan Rogue, which offers solid gas mileage and some needed space for whenever my wife and I begin to have kids. But until I bought that car almost exactly two years ago, the only vehicle I’d ever owned was a 2001 Ford Taurus. It was the color of a Dr. Pepper can, had virtually zero cabin technology beyond a cassette deck, and made trips all over the contiguous United States with me.

I took care of it as best I could. Later in its life, it started spawning some rust on the rear wheel wells, but it was virtually indestructible. When I was in high school, a neighbor of ours backed into it while leaving for work. So it got a cosmetic touch-up and a replaced left headlight. That same neighbor backed into it the following year, in virtually identical fashion, and it required pretty much the same procedure once again. When I was a junior in college, I got into the only accident of my life, as I hydroplaned and ended up unavoidably rear-ending another vehicle down in Dallas. I went to a salvage yard and managed to dig up a grill, a hood ornament and another new left headlight. I beat the hood back into shape, and save for a couple small punctures and scrapes on the front bumper, the car was no worse for the wear.

Once, during the pandemic, that car’s engine started misfiring in 110-degree heat somewhere in the New Mexico desert. I was 30 miles from Las Cruces, and there was no civilization any closer than that. So I threw the car’s hood up, jimmied with the spark plugs and said a prayer. It started back up and didn’t give me a problem for the remainder of the trip. And in the months before I finally decided to scrap it, the engine began to make an ominous rattling sound. It sprung a coolant leak, and I remember driving home from Houston with the car on the verge of overheating the entire time. Over the final year and a half of that car’s life, I’m not sure the check engine light was off for more than a day or two at a time.

Even so, that thing just kept driving. It always got me from point A to point B, harrowing as it may have been for any passenger that got in the car and heard an engine that sounded like a distressed lawnmower.

Watching Oklahoma’s 27-21 victory over Auburn yesterday felt a little bit like riding in my old Taurus. The Sooners were battered, they were inefficient and they made it quite the adventure on Saturday. But when all the smoke cleared, they reached the destination. And there’s something to be said for that.

I’ll tell you this much: I’d have taken my Taurus all day and every day over a sexier Audi or Challenger with transmission issues. And that’s what Oklahoma has been in years past. They’ve occupied the national spotlight, been in the CFP conversation and established a reputation as one of the more consistent regular-season winners in the sport. But they’ve also demonstrated a frustrating tendency to sputter at the most inconvenient junctures.

This Oklahoma team in 2024 isn’t sexy. They don’t look the part of a national contender, and sure… maybe they can’t keep it rolling forever. But this team’s ability to win a football game under such dire circumstances ought not to be dismissed. Yesterday’s contest is not a game that the 2022 Sooners win. It’s likely not a game that the 2023 Sooners win, either. By no means am I going to try and sell you on an upset over Texas or a surprise run to the playoff or anything like that. But Oklahoma is an SEC team now. Sometimes you have to be able — and willing — to just take a win, no matter how it looks in the box score or how it looked on TV.

Alabama needed a fourth-and-31 miracle last fall to beat that very same Auburn team that had lost at home to New Mexico State one week prior. Weird crap happens in the SEC. More so than ever, a win is a win is a win. Style points mattered in the Big 12, but as we discussed after the Houston game, style points don’t really matter in the SEC. All that matters is finding a way to win.

Not all of you will have the capacity to say or think anything positive after the Sooners’ performance at Auburn, and that’s fine. But the team that walked off the field at Jordan-Hare yesterday — at least the team that I saw — is a team that’s unified behind its true freshman quarterback and took legitimate inspiration from the resilient comeback effort. They’ll have a sense of belief moving forward. And that can be a powerful thing in college football.

But hey, if you're pissed, so am I! Let's get angry together.

— I hear the noise that this board makes on a weekly basis about Seth Littrell’s playcalling. And up to this point, I’ve dismissed some of the head-scratching play calls as merely a natural by-product of attrition on offense. But the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results, and we’re bordering on insanity with some of Littrell’s calls. I’m not a terribly reactionary person by nature, although I was on the verge of Mean Tweeting yesterday when Jacobe Johnson had yet to see the field in the third quarter and none of the Sooners’ receivers could get open. But I think I’m gonna give it one more game before I’m willing to make a judgment on Littrell. There’s no reason why the Red River Showdown shouldn’t show us the absolute best of what Littrell has to offer as an offensive coordinator. There ought to be many a wrinkle that we have yet to see. Only a masterpiece of a gameplan will enable Oklahoma to knock off a Longhorn team that is likely to enter the game as the No. 1 team in the nation. It can’t be inside zone on first down and Just Have Mike Figure Something Out on second down for three quarters.

— The Sooners continue to shoot themselves in the collective foot with stupid and untimely penalties. An offensive pass interference call on Jake Roberts wiped out a huge Bauer Sharp catch and run in the first quarter, which marked the beginning of Oklahoma’s offensive malaise. An illegal motion call on Sharp took a third-quarter touchdown catch by Jovantae Barnes off the board, an (albeit questionable) illegal block in the back by Jaquaize Pettaway erased another chunk play, and a holding call on Roberts created a second-and-long that led to a turnover on downs. This cannot happen in the Cotton Bowl, and it cannot happen thereafter. Auburn allowed Oklahoma to hang around, and the Sooners finally cashed in when the Tigers’ mistakes continued to pile up. Teams like Texas and Alabama and even South Carolina will not allow an opponent that self-inflicts damage to hang around. Big plays are hard enough to come by for this offense right now.

— I’m just out on Kani Walker. I can’t do it anymore. He’s a liability in man coverage, and is going to continue to get beaten deep if the Sooner staff continues to put him on the field. Oklahoma’s Achilles’ heel on defense right now is that cornerback room, and with Woodi Washington playing a lot of cheetah as of late, they need someone to step up and play lockdown ball on the outside. I think Eli Bowen is the best cornerback on the roster right now, and he finished yesterday’s game with the highest PFF grade in the group. He needs to start against Texas if Oklahoma wants to have a chance of containing a talented Longhorn receiving corps, because Walker can’t get the job done. If he’s left one-on-one with pretty much any wide receiver, I have zero faith that he can hold his own. I’ll give Dez Malone a mulligan for now because I haven’t seen him flop as consistently as Walker, but Malone wasn’t much more reliable yesterday.

— Kip Lewis channeled his inner Torrance Marshall on the Plains, and on a day that oddly saw Danny Stutsman make less of a productive impact than he arguably ever has in his career as a starter, it was Lewis that delivered the most pivotal play of Oklahoma’s season to date. Zac Alley dialed up a simulated pressure to try and bait Payton Thorne into a mistake, and the Auburn quarterback bit hard. Lewis feigned a blitz, dropped back into coverage and stepped in front of a Thorne pass for his first career interception. 63 yards later, the redshirt sophomore from East Texas crossed the goal line to turn a 21-16 Auburn lead into a 22-21 Oklahoma advantage. Before the season, Venables had talked up Lewis as a guy that could morph into one of the great linebackers to wear the crimson and cream, and we’re beginning to see that potential manifest. He’s giving the Sooner faithful a reason to believe that upon Stutsman’s graduation, there might not be a drop-off in the program’s linebacker play after all.

— I don’t know what kind of illicit substances the water boys put in R Mason Thomas’ Gatorade before the fourth quarter of games. It’s clearly something that needs to be consumed in moderation. It must be a substance on which you can overdose, and that’s why they can only give it to him for one quarter every game. Does he get the caffeine patch like Dr. Krunklehorn from Meet the Robinsons? Or are we talking straight cocaine here? Some of that Walter White blue rock? Whatever the case, RMT goes berserk like an infuriated rooster whenever the Sooners need to close out a football game. You think the kid would be offended if I started referring to him as the Cocaine Rooster? After his one-man takeover against Tulane that featured three sacks and a forced fumble, Thomas once again unleashed Hellion Mode on Auburn, getting to Payton Thorne for two late sacks that helped ice the win. He leads the team with 5.5 sacks through five games, and if Oklahoma’s offense can build leads and put opponents in obvious passing situations frequently, RMT is going to continue to accumulate ridiculous sack totals. Because he’s at his best when he can just pin his ears back and come flying off the edge.

— When every OU fan in attendance is chanting your name as you walk off the field, that’s how you know you’ve put a stranglehold on the QB1 role. And that’s precisely what Michael Hawkins did on Saturday. He went 10-of-15 for 161 yards and he flashed his speed and elusiveness on a 48-yard touchdown run in the first quarter, but he endeared himself to the Sooner faithful by taking flight for a crucial two-point conversion in the final minutes. Immediately after Lewis’ pick-six, Hawkins dropped back to pass for the conversion, but had nowhere to go with the ball and was seemingly dead to rights as the pocket collapsed. He somehow escaped, took off toward the pylon and went airborne, helicoptering over a pair of Auburn defenders into the end zone. I mentioned it in the postgame podcast, and I’ll reiterate it here: I’ve been watching and covering Michael Hawkins for years. He plays incredibly smart football, as evidenced by his zero turnovers through six quarters as QB1. But I’ve never seen him play with such thorough disregard for his own bodily safety before. And I firmly believe it’s because the name on the front of the jersey means something to him. He’s aspired to this role, at this school, basically forever. Need evidence that he’s got the very definition of OUDNA? Here you go.