John Mateer shouldn’t necessarily need to rehash or reiterate why he chose to transfer to Oklahoma prior to this season. It is evident, with respect to his previous university, that there is a different prestige at his position around these parts.
Privilege is another apt description.
Pressure, too, might fit the bill.
He wouldn’t be here if he didn’t want that.
“It’s everything I’ve dreamed of,” Mateer said Monday afternoon. “It obviously hasn’t gone perfect, but, it’s been great. To be somebody that puts on this jersey, and throws the football for this university, has been a huge honor.”
That jersey has a history.
Like, a really good one, and Mateer has stepped into it.
The Sooners produced or partly developed six quarterbacks — Philadelphia’s Jalen Hurts, Arizona’s Kyler Murray, Tampa Bay’s Baker Mayfield, Chicago’s Caleb Williams, New Orleans’ Spencer Rattler and Cleveland’s Dillon Gabriel — who have started an NFL game this season.
Murray and Mayfield both won the Heisman Trophy at Oklahoma. Williams did the same after he followed former Oklahoma head coach Lincoln Riley to USC. Hurts was a finalist in his lone season at Oklahoma and won the Super Bowl this year with the Eagles.
None won a College Football Playoff game at Oklahoma.
The Sooners are 0-4 all time in playoff games and haven’t played in one since they lost to eventual champion LSU in the Peach Bowl semifinal six years ago. Mateer, a Little Elm native, can do something his prestigious predecessors never did when No. 8 Oklahoma (10-2) hosts No. 9 Alabama (10-3) in a first-round game at Norman’s Memorial Stadium Friday night.
“This is a dream come true,” Mateer said. “This is everything I could’ve asked for as a kid. I kind of told myself that, like, a year ago, I prayed for this opportunity. I’ve hoped for it, I’ve worked for it, I’m glad it’s here and I’m not going to take it for granted.”
A different kind of Oklahoma quarterback
Ten quarterbacks have been picked directly out of Oklahoma since Earl Crowder was the fifth signal caller ever selected in the second annual draft 86 years ago. That figure pales in comparison to USC (26), Notre Dame (25) or Stanford (23), but Oklahoma’s three first-overall quarterbacks picks since 2010 lead the field and are the second-most all time.
Murray (2019), Mayfield (2018) and Sam Bradford (2010) were each selected first overall in their respective classes. Mayfield, a Texas Tech transfer, was the lowest-ranked high school recruit of the three as the No. 47 quarterback in his class according to 247Sports.com. The next nine quarterbacks who started a game for the Sooners were ranked No. 27 or higher in their class.
Mateer, the 10th to start a game since Mayfield, was ranked No. 119 in his. He was a four-year starter at Little Elm, passed for a school-record 6,868 yards and was the District 5-6A Offensive Player of the Year in a league that included powerhouse Denton Guyer and Allen teams.
He still didn’t crack The Dallas Morning News’ area top 100 recruits list in the 2022 class and remained lightly recruited through his senior season. Former Little Elm head coach Kendrick Brown said that Mateer’s height (6-foot-1) might’ve in part dulled the interest.
Mateer garnered six scholarship offers in high school. Five came from FCS programs. Renowned quarterback guru Eric Morris offered Mateer a scholarship at Incarnate Word and did so again after he was hired at Washington State.
“I actually offered him on the baseball field,” Morris, now Oklahoma State’s head coach, told The Dallas Morning News earlier this season. “I think you really gain a different insight to these quarterbacks watching them play other sports. I offered Cam Ward watching him play basketball. It’s hard to see someone really communicate and leadership qualities when they have a helmet on. I think it gives you a little bit more personal insight to the way they handle different situations.”
Mateer, then committed to Central Arkansas, flipped and signed with Washington State after another recruit decommitted and opened a spot behind Ward on the quarterback depth chart. He backed up Ward for two seasons, and after the eventual Heisman Trophy winner and first-overall draft choice transferred to Miami, started as a redshirt sophomore.
He passed for 3,139 yards and 29 touchdowns at Washington State last year and entered the transfer portal afterwards. He followed offensive coordinator/quarterback coach Ben Arbuckle from Washington State to Oklahoma, was named the starter this fall and was considered a Heisman Trophy dark horse candidate before a broken bone in his right hand sidelined him for three weeks.
“He had an opportunity to go to any university he wanted to,” Brown said. “John Mateer has always seen himself as a quarterback that would be at a place like Oklahoma. You’re looking at a guy whose confidence level was through the roof.”
Mateer returned on Oct. 11 vs. Texas in the Red River Rivalry game at the Cotton Bowl, and threw three interceptions in a 23-6 loss. He’d passed for 200 or more yards in each of his first five games but did so just twice — once in a loss to Ole Miss and again in a win vs. LSU — in his last seven. Oklahoma head coach Brent Venables acknowledged as recently as Wednesday that Mateer “still has some soreness” in his surgically repaired hand.
“Not everything has gone perfect and it never does,” Mateer said. “But I know I’m in the right spot because I have the right people around me who still have my back and that’s all that matters.”
His 2,578 yards passing and 12 touchdowns are both the fewest that any full-time Oklahoma quarterback has thrown in over a decade since the program became synonymous with high-level signal callers. The Sooners have compensated for the relative lack of offensive explosiveness with a Venables-led defense that ranks among the best in the country and helped anchor their Nov. 15 win over the Crimson Tide that helped certify their playoff resume.
Mateer, who threw just six touchdowns in his last six regular-season games, passed for only 138 yards in a 23-21 win against Alabama when the two teams met for the first time. He acknowledged that there’s been “a lot of self scout” in the two weeks since Oklahoma last played.
“You’re always getting better,” Mateer said. “People can say, ‘Oh, it hasn’t clicked in 14 weeks, it’s not going to.’ Whatever. It’s one day at a time, you get better, and you get better with the people around you.”
The people around him believe that Mateer, who grew up three hours south of campus and has watched Oklahoma’s quarterback lineage blossom, can take a step closer toward those who came before him.
“There’s a reason John Mateer came to OU,” Arbuckle said. “He wants to be the best, he wants to play at the best, he wants to compete against the best and he’s never once lost sight of that.”
The D-FW pipeline
Mateer joined an Oklahoma quarterback room well-visited by Dallas-Fort Worth products when he transferred from Washington State.
Denton Guyer alum Jackson Arnold, a five-star recruit and Gatorade National Player of the Year in high school, started for the Sooners last season and transferred to Auburn prior to this one. Frisco Emerson alum Michael Hawkins Jr., an Oklahoma legacy, started for the Sooners last season after Arnold was benched midyear.
“It just shows how they produce their quarterbacks,” Hawkins told The News on the day that he signed with the Sooners. “If it wasn’t for that, it’d probably be different for a lot of players.”
Three of the last four top-ranked quarterbacks on The News’ top 100 recruits list signed with Oklahoma and six area signal callers overall in the last seven years have. Murray, a multi-time state champion who transferred to Oklahoma from Texas A&M, remains the program’s gold standard for Dallas-area grads after he totaled 5,362 yards of offense, 54 touchdowns and was selected first overall in the NFL draft after his lone season as Oklahoma’s starter.
“You look at all of these quarterbacks that have come through Oklahoma and had success in the NFL,” Brown said. “Man, if you’re a quarterback, and you look at these Texas guys, if you go to Oklahoma and you can play and you can win, man, that resonates.”
Celina quarterback Bowe Bentley — a 4A Div. I state champion last season whose repeat bid ended in the semifinals last week — signed with the Sooners earlier this month. He’s the No. 7 player on The News’ top 100 recruits list for the class of 2026 and the top-ranked quarterback.
“I love winners and I love competitors,” Arbuckle said. “It was really easy to see in Bowe’s film that he was an elite competitor that really loved to put the team on his back whether it was throwing the ball or running the ball.”
The Sooners have not had a title-winning quarterback since current Tennessee head coach Josh Huepel led them to a BCS National Championship game victory 25 years ago.
Mateer could be the next.
“He’s always had that belief that he is one of the better quarterbacks out there,” Brown said. “He’s always wanted to prove that on a big stage.”
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