Brutal mistakes in Oklahoma's playoff loss to Alabama prove that Sooners' offseason will be defined by tricky John Mateer decision
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The Oklahoma Sooners 2025 season has come to an end after a heartbreaking 34-24 loss to the Alabama Crimson Tide in the first round of the College Football Playoff. A winnable game fell apart in what felt like Murphy’s Law taking a sledgehammer to the Sooners’ momentum.
Oklahoma outgained Alabama by over 100 yards (important stat for some), but mistakes on special teams and a pick-six from John Mateer ultimately proved costly for the Sooners. Now as they enter the offseason ahead of the 2026 season, their decision surrounding what to do with John Mateer will be the defining story of their offseason, and there’s no real easy answer for Brent Venables, Jim Nagy, and this program.
John Mateer is both a problem and solution
On the scale of college quarterbacks, Mateer is a quarterback the Sooners “can win with”. He’s toed the line between win with and win “in spite of” for most of the season, but for the most part, has veered towards the win with side of the equation with timely clutch plays. Even against Alabama, this was evident, as he made plenty of plays throughout the game with both his arm and his legs. If you told me Mateer would throw for 307 yards and score three total touchdowns (and could have had four), I would have easily picked OU to win the game.
The problem for Oklahoma is: to take that next step as a program, Mateer has to become a quarterback the Sooners win “because of”. Those two or three mental lapses he has per game have put a kibosh on so many opportunities for the Sooners all season long, and have cost Oklahoma in arguably all three of their losses this season and almost cost them in their four-game win streak to close out the regular season. While Mateer didn’t outright lose the playoff game to Alabama, several bad misses and bad sacks he took (quit blaming the OL for the quarterback not being able to manage pressure) stalled plenty of drives, and the pick-six was virtually the dagger for the Sooners.
This is the conundrum the Sooners face entering the offseason: you have no idea which John Mateer you’re going to get drive-to-drive, much less game-to-game. Can they go into another promising 2026 season with him at the helm? How much can you trust him?
The argument for John Mateer
Like I said earlier, on the scale of college quarterbacks, Mateer is far from the worst. We saw what that looked like last season with Jackson Arnold, and I’m comfortable saying Mateer is an upgrade there.
We’ve seen quarterbacks at every level of the game take huge steps forward mentally in their third year as a starter. Coincidentally, next season would be Mateer’s third season as a starter. Theoretically, more time working against an SEC-caliber defense, less time rehabbing from injury, a full offseason to tweek his mechanics, and there’s a definite path forward to rationale an improvement from Mateer. There’s no better teacher than experience, and we’ve seen it play out time and time again with multiple quarterbacks in a similar manner.
Additionally, Mateer’s “contract” (I don’t like phrasing it that way but it is what it is these days) is cheaper than what Oklahoma will have to pay to pull an outright upgrade at quarterback out of the transfer portal. The difference between what Mateer makes right now and what the Sooners would have to pay for one of those truly elite quarterbacks (if there are any) could be applied for roster investments in the surrounding talent. Would you feel better about Mateer hypothetically throwing to players like Omarion Miller or Nick Marsh (who are both in the portal at the moment) or a Brendan Sorsby throwing to Ivan Carreon?
There’s no Fernando Mendoza-caliber quarterback sitting in the portal as I’m writing this, and the options that could be you have to hope enter the portal and then don’t get poached by a Oregon/Miami/LSU/etc, so finding that guy is a slim hope, and then you have to spend the offseason teaching him the offense, building chemistry with the players on roster, etc., etc. You run the risk of not even having a quarterback if you run Mateer off and don’t pull in a player out of the portal, and those elite guys are going to be tough to beat out the rest of the country for in the first place. Additionally, 2026 star quarterback recruit Bowe Bentley is waiting in the wings and is set to be the guy in 2027. Adding a quarterback with multiple years of eligibility messes up that pipeline.
The argument against John Mateer
The problem is that all of that I said above is purely hypothetical and a huge gamble. We know the defense will return enough talent to still be elite. That’s not going away under Brent Venables, so the offense has to pick up the slack, and Mateer cannot have another year like this year.
You’d have to gamble on him taking that next step, but he might just be what he is. This is his third year with Ben Arbuckle, and something still just hasn’t outright clicked for him to be the quarterback Oklahoma needs to take that step beyond as a program. He’s a frustrating watch who places a clear limit on this team at his current level, and we have no real reason to believe that will just suddenly fix itself with another offseason. It has in the past for other quarterbacks, but not every quarterback.
Can Oklahoma afford to gamble on that development? I think Brent Venables has kept himself off the hot seat with his Playoff appearance this season, there’s no doubt, but another potentially wasted season with quarterback play is going to raise the ire of fans on both him and offensive coordinator Ben Arbuckle (even if it isn’t Arbuckle’s fault). Wasting another year of an elite defense with an offense mired with ill-advised turnovers and frustrating misses under center is going to be infuriating to watch especially if one of those quarterbacks in the portal does look productive at a different school.
Sooners stuck between rock and a hard place with Mateer
Like I said, there’s no real easy answer here, and it’s one that I don’t get paid enough to make. I can see the arguments for both sides, and both make plenty of logical sense. Whatever decision they make, it would be hard to fault the Sooners and the staff with the way they went.
The only way they really get “saved” here is if Mateer decides to declare for the 2026 NFL Draft. There are basically no Day Two or Day Three quarterbacks left in this class, and teams might just like Mateer’s combination of arm talent and playmaking, even with the frustrating mental gaffes. If he declares, OU can then fully go in on the portal, and the expectations can somewhat reset for next season. However, that does bring its own risks for the program as well, so it isn’t a perfect break either.
How Oklahoma handles this decision will be the story of their entire offseason and will define their 2026 season. We’ll see what they do, but Brent Venables and Jim Nagy have earned the benefit of the doubt with whatever decision they make.
This story was originally published by A to Z Sports on Dec 20, 2025, where it first appeared in the College Football section. Add A to Z Sports as a Preferred Source by clicking here.
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