J.D. PicKell thinks John Mateer can make Norman a QB destination again

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The lineage of great quarterback play at the University of Oklahoma is incredible, to say the least. OU has become QBU, and you need to look no further than the first quarter of the 21st-century to see why.

Now, Oklahoma Football has almost always had great quarterbacks, no matter the era. However, when the legendary Bob Stoops was hired as the head coach at OU ahead of the 1999 season, the Sooners fully embraced the forward pass for the first time in the program’s history. The results at quarterback have typically been outstanding since then.

Josh Heupel, Jason White, Sam Bradford, Landry Jones, Baker Mayfield, Kyler Murray, and Jalen Hurts, just to name a few, are some of college football’s most elite signal-callers of the current century, and all of them starred for the Sooners.

While some would argue that Oklahoma is still a quarterback destination in the 2020s, and hasn’t lost that standing at all in this century, others would argue that the Sooners have slipped a bit under center in recent memory, and perhaps aren’t the QB hotspot team they once were.

On3 Sports’ J.D. PicKell, the host of “The Hard Count with J.D. PicKell“, believes that for those who think Norman isn’t a QB destination anymore, there’s one big key to changing that. Unsurprisingly, it all falls on the current man sitting in that chair at OU, John Mateer.

“If Oklahoma can get back to their ways, I think it would be scary for the rest of college football and I think it would shake up the entire sport, which hinges then, on what John Mateer does this year in 2026,” PicKell said.

PicKell went on to outline the reasons he believes Mateer can have a strong second and final season with the Sooners, including his experience with offensive coordinator Ben Arbuckle’s Air Raid system, his experience in the SEC after last year, the fact that his hand is healthy again, and that Oklahoma has placed more weapons around him and hopes to have a much better running game this fall.

However, the Sooners have gone through gaps between star quarterbacks before. Notably, after Jones’ last season in 2012, the Sooners went through two years with Trevor Knight, Blake Bell, and Cody Thomas under center, which didn’t reach the level of production needed in Norman. Then in 2015, Mayfield took over, leading to a QB renaissance in the late 2010s at OU.

Mayfield’s success in ’15 led to Murray transferring to Oklahoma, after Mayfield proved that success could be had in Lincoln Riley’s offense at OU. Murray waited behind Mayfield for two years, before becoming a star in his own right. That success led to Hurts’ transfer to Oklahoma, which gave the Sooners another star QB in their illustrious lineage.

Though this is Mateer’s last year of eligibility, he can trigger the same kind of lineage that Mayfield did if he has a strong year in 2026. After the 2024 season with Jackson Arnold and Michael Hawkins Jr. under center didn’t go according to plan for OU, Arbuckle arrived and hand-picked Mateer to come with him. Mateer’s success in Arbuckle’s scheme this season can set the table for Bowe Bentley, and/or Jamison Roberts, and/or someone else to carry the torch when he’s gone, but Mateer has to be the spark. PicKell thinks he has the intangibles to get it done, traits that might remind Sooner Nation of Mayfield himself.

“I really believe that John Mateer has that trait that most great competitors have where, when the chips are stacked, and there is a certain amount of disbelief, he plays his best,” PicKell said. “That was John Mateer’s entire career arc … Doubted his whole life. Always too small. Always too much of a gunslinger … Like he’s always been this kind of like doubted guy, and I think that continuing into this upcoming season after what last year was after I think in glimpses he proved to himself, ‘No, no, I can hang here.’ I really believe that’s going to bode well for him over the course of 2026 and I think he is going to pick up where he left off when he was healthy in the month of September.”

In the bigger picture, the Sooners will always expect to have a very good defense for as long as Brent Venables is the head coach at Oklahoma. If they can have the kind of year-in and year-out play at the quarterback position and on offense that they enjoyed under Stoops and Riley paired with an excellent Venables-led defense each year, that’s where things could get really scary for the rest of the sport.

Stoops won big with strong QB play leading strong offenses, and high-level, stingy defenses. Riley won a lot of games with explosive offenses and strong QB play, but he couldn’t win at the highest level because he didn’t want to field a competitive defense. Venables has flipped the script on defense in Norman, but he needs the offense to carry its weight to achieve his goal of complementary football.

“I think what’s kind of unique about Oklahoma is the personality that they have at at the head coaching position for them in Norman, it doesn’t always align itself with having great quarterback play,” PicKell said. “Now, what do I mean by that? Typically, these quarterback guys … usually they are former quarterbacks themselves or they are offensive-minded guys … So when you’re a quarterback guy, I believe it’s really tricky to strike that balance of having a great quarterback, majoring on offense while also being consistent on defense … My point in all this is I think that with Brent Venables being a defensive guy, if Oklahoma as the place becomes an attractive spot for quarterbacks, that formula will be really, really difficult to not sustain because of who Brent Venables is on defense and because of what Oklahoma attracts at the quarterback spot. And again, those two things, I think you’re set up for a very long time in modern college football.”

Oklahoma knows what star quarterback play looks like, but perhaps that level of play has slipped in recent years. The key to getting it back to the highest level is a player who gained valuable experience last year, and Mateer has the chance begin another great run of QBs in Norman that could last well after his time at OU has come to a close. A run like that could be the very thing that pushes the Sooners over the top under Venables’ leadership.

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This article originally appeared on Sooners Wire: Can John Mateer turn Norman, Oklahoma into a QB destination again?

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