On Monday night, the Bucs will visit the Chiefs in a prime-time showdown between Kansas City quarterback Patrick Mahomes and Tampa Bay quarterback Baker Mayfield, the reigning Super Bowl MVP facing the NFL’s current leader in touchdown passes.
The two have faced off three times before in the NFL, with Mahomes winning all three games. But the real opportunity for any reunion of Mahomes and Mayfield is to look back on one of the most epic games in college football history: Mahomes and Texas Tech hosting Mayfield and Oklahoma on Oct. 22, 2016.
“It’s the wildest game I’ve ever worked on, for sure,” said Bruce Feldman, who was the sideline reporter for FOX Sports’ broadcast that night and wrote an oral history of the game for The Athletic in 2018.
The two teams combined to score touchdowns on 10 straight drives in the second half, the last nine all at least 75 yards long. Oklahoma junior QB Mayfield finished with 545 passing yards and a school-record seven touchdowns, and Sooners running back Joe Mixon rushed for 263 yards and five total touchdowns. Texas Tech junior QB Mahomes threw a ridiculous 88 passes, completing 52, and tied a college football record with 734 passing yards and seven total touchdowns (five passing, two rushing).
Bob Stoops’ Sooners beat Kliff Kingsbury’s Red Raiders 66-59, and each team had exactly 854 yards of total offense. The 1,708 combined yards is still a college football record. That’s within an easy throw of an actual mile of offense in a single game, and it helped elevate Mayfield and Mahomes as two of college football’s most prolific passers.
“That really helped Baker Mayfield win the Heisman Trophy the next year, and frankly put him in that category as a Heisman finalist. And I don’t think Patrick Mahomes is a first-round draft pick, let alone Kansas City trading up to get him, without that outstanding performance,” said FOX Sports national college football analyst RJ Young, who got a graduate degree in professional writing from Oklahoma in 2012. “It’s a precursor of what that [Sooners] program would look like for the next four years.”
We talked to players, coaches, writers and broadcasters who were there that day in Lubbock, Texas, and remember the lunacy of so many points, so many yards — and a few flying tortillas.
JONATHAN GILES, Texas Tech receiver who caught two touchdowns that day, now a high school coach in Texas: That whole week, it was exciting, because we knew it was going to be a high-scoring game. It was more, “OK, Let’s see whose offense is really better.” Our defense wasn’t doing that good and Oklahoma’s defense was kind of up and down. So we knew it was going to be a 30-to-40 [point] game. We didn’t know it would be a 50-60 game. Man, as a player, you’re almost in awe. It felt like we were playing a video game in real life.
The gaudy offensive statistics are one thing, but the game had real drama, with Mayfield returning to Lubbock, where he had started for Texas Tech as a true freshman walk-on three years earlier. Texas Tech students made black T-shirts with the state of Oklahoma in red and the word “TRAITOR” above it. Mayfield himself would wear one of the shirts a year later in pregame when Texas Tech went to Oklahoma. The Sooners won that day as well.
FELDMAN: Baker was polarizing. When he came out on the field, you heard the chants: “F— you, Baker!” … Everybody could hear it. He’s like a pro wrestling character. He was really good about soaking it in and rolling with it and eating it up.
DIMITRI FLOWERS, Oklahoma fullback, caught a touchdown pass that day, now an attorney in Oklahoma City: That whole week, social media, that environment on the field was absolutely insane. That entire game, it was the perfect college football environment. Bake is very self-motivated, but also gets motivated by non-believers. He brings that kind of energy to the huddle and takes command of a team.
Both teams did plenty of scoring that season, and they had to: Oklahoma topped 50 points five times, and TCU and Texas had both scored more than 40 in losses to the Sooners. Texas Tech gave up 66 that day, but had already given up 68 in a loss to Arizona State, and would give up 66 again in a loss to Iowa State.
BERRY TRAMEL, longtime columnist at The Oklahoman: Tech was always having trouble on defense. That was more of a Mahomes masterpiece than a Mayfield masterpiece, because you sort of expected teams to light up Tech, but you didn’t yet expect them to light up Oklahoma. That came later.
For all the scoring, Texas Tech led only once — 24-23 just before halftime. The Red Raiders held the lead for all of 20 seconds before the next Mayfield touchdown gave Oklahoma a 30-24 lead at the half.
TRAMEL: The craziest part was the second half. Tech punted to open the second half, and there were no more stops the rest of the game. Each team scored five touchdowns, and OU ran out the clock. It was kooky.
ERIC MORRIS, then Texas Tech offensive coordinator, now head coach at North Texas: The second half was just back and forth, back and forth. Nobody could make the other one sputter at all. Punters were on the sideline. There were really long plays, which equaled short drives. It’d be interesting to go back and time every scoring drive. If I had to guess, they’d be about two minutes.
Sure enough, the game had seven scoring drives of less than two minutes. Add up 19 scoring drives and you get 46 minutes and 13 seconds, more than three full quarters, for an average of 2:43 per score.
Sooners quarterback Baker Mayfield returned to his former school and torched Texas Tech for 545 yards and seven touchdowns without throwing an interception. (Photo by Sam Grenadier/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
FLOWERS: Both quarterbacks are improvising, throwing off-balance. A play you think is going to take three seconds, next thing you know it takes 20 because they’re scrambling around, making people miss. And both of them are throwing 50-yard touchdown passes. Everyone’s like, “What the hell was that?” That’s just how that game kind of was.
NICK BASQUINE, who caught a touchdown that day as a Sooners receiver, now on Oklahoma’s staff as an analyst: I was on special teams, too, and you just went through a drive, you get a special-teams rep, you try to get a drink of water and you see they’re in the red zone, they just scored. It’s OK, here we go. It was exhausting as a player, like “Who’s going to break?” and luckily we came out on top. When you had somebody like Baker leading us, he set the tempo, so we knew we were never going to quit and we’d keep punching and fighting back.
REGINALD DAVIS, Texas Tech receiver, now a high school coach in Lubbock: They’d say, “Offense up, offense up.” I’m like, “Golly, this is crazy.” Back to back. We just got off the field, and we’re back on the field. A lot of great moments in that game, and I just wish we could have won it. We broke some records in that game.
GILES: It was so fun to be a part of. As a teammate, you might be mad at the defense, but this game, we knew it was going to be like this. Sometimes, as athletes, you try to downplay the significance of the game, but Pat wasn’t like that. Of course, he’d say to the media it’s just another game, but he knew and we all knew. There’s a reason you have rivalry games. We knew what was ahead of us, and it was fun. He was just super-excited all week. It felt like the national championship game.
Every time Texas Tech scored in the second half to make it a one-score game, Oklahoma would answer to keep the Red Raiders at a distance. Texas Tech’s attempt at an onside kick was recovered by the Sooners in the final two minutes, and only then did the scoring end.
MORRIS: Up in the press box, it was one for the ages. A feeling of jubilation, followed by “Oh, no, they scored again,” followed by jubilation, back and forth.
For all of Patrick Mahomes’ incredible passing feats that day, the most incredible Mahomes throw came off the field. Texas Tech has an odd pregame tradition of throwing tortillas onto the field. Local legend has a TV announcer in 1992 saying on air that Lubbock had little more to it than Texas Tech and a tortilla factory, and from that came an unofficial tradition that was on display that day against the Sooners. Mahomes’ mother told Feldman for his story in The Athletic that Patrick’s brother, Jackson, threw a tortilla that hit Mayfield on the sidelines.
“He was doing it to be funny,” she said. “I’ve always said he’s my class clown. Baker picked it up and took a bite out of it. Then Patrick’s brother got thrown out of the game.”
TRAMEL: They’ve been [throwing tortillas] forever. I don’t understand why people get worked up about it. Tortillas never hurt anybody. They were throwing water bottles in Austin last week. [Texas Tech] fans are pretty ruffian. They’ve got a group called the Saddle Tramps. The former dean of the OU College of Engineering, my wife worked for him for a long time, just a super guy, mild-mannered, real cerebral, but he was a Saddle Tramp in Lubbock 50 years ago. They get pretty wild out there.
BASQUINE: I’m surprised they can get the tortillas out to the field. The distance from the stands to the field is pretty far. They know how to throw tortillas. They had the technique down. I’m looking back thinking they’re right behind us, and they’re at least 15 yards back.
FELDMAN: They fling them like Frisbees.
It’s rare to see so many points in a game that didn’t go to overtime. Feldman also worked the 2012 Baylor–West Virginia game, which finished 70-63 in regulation, with Mountaineers quarterback Geno Smith throwing for 656 yards and eight touchdowns.
FELDMAN: That was wild, but this was different. I don’t think everybody knew how good Patrick was. Obviously, he’s a superstar in the NFL now, but this was almost his coming-out party.
Against Oklahoma in 2016, Texas Tech junior QB Patrick Mahomes was a one-man wrecking crew, flashing his potential as a pro. (Photo by Sam Grenadier/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
Mahomes also had 12 carries for 85 yards. Add his 12 carries to his 88 passes and he was directly involved in 100 offensive plays. The next-closest to that total he had in any college game was 77, and his NFL high is 74.
MORRIS: That’s a lot of passes for one game. At some point, they had to know that, shoot, the ball was going to be thrown 95 percent of the time.
BASQUINE: We knew Mahomes was a good player, but didn’t think he’d turn into who he is today. Looking back, it’s crazy to think about how much talent was on the field, how historic of a night it was.
TRAMEL: Mahomes was just doing the same things we’re seeing him do now, just running around and making magic. Tech couldn’t do anything to Mayfield, but OU would frustrate Mahomes. They just couldn’t get him corralled. What we see on Sundays now.
DAVIS: During the game, we weren’t thinking much about it, but looking back on it, these are two of the most dynamic quarterbacks in the country going at it. That was crazy.
GILES: If Pat was excited, you know Baker Mayfield was excited. The energy, you could feel it, the vibe, not just the stadium, but the whole town. For me, that’s the best game I’ve ever been a part of, hands down. … You usually wouldn’t say that about a loss, but watching it as a player and a fan, you appreciate those kinds of games. Watching it again on TV doesn’t do it justice. I wish I could relive it.
Greg Auman is an NFL Reporter for FOX Sports. He previously spent a decade covering the Buccaneers for the Tampa Bay Times and The Athletic. You can follow him on Twitter at @gregauman.
[Want great stories delivered right to your inbox? Create or log in to your FOX Sports account, follow leagues, teams and players to receive a personalized newsletter daily.]
Get more from National Football League Follow your favorites to get information about games, news and more
