Brent Venables answers the question everyone is wanting to know after John Mateer’s terrible game vs. LSU
Brent Venables wanted to roll with John Mateer all the way through the win over LSU.
The Oklahoma Sooners, once again, forgot how to play offense. Since the beginning of the season, the offense has been bad, with the defense oftentimes saving their tail. This win against the LSU Tigers produced the same result: the offense being bailed out. A lot, if not all, of the issues came at the hands of quarterback John Mateer, who had three interceptions and almost another.
Despite that terrible play, head coach Brent Venables never once thought about doing what everyone begged him to do: Put backup quarterback Michael Hawkins Jr. in.
“No,” Venables said firmly when asked.
The Sooners had full faith in Mateer the entire game.
Mateer ‘bounced back’ in the fourth quarter vs. LSU
At the very end of the third quarter, Mateer threw a touchdown pass to wide receiver Deion Burks. It was a bubble screen that Burks took for a 47-yard touchdown. Then, in the fourth quarter, Mateer threw a touchdown to wide receiver Isaiah Sategna, who was as open as you will ever see a player in the SEC.
So, with two touchdowns in the back half of the game and over 300 yards passing, Mateer bounced back. Well, kind of.
“Yeah, I’m not surprised. Shot after shot, blow after blow, and he [John Mateer] kept responding,” Brent Venables told reporters when asked about his feelings regarding Mateer’s “bouncing back” in the fourth quarter.
If those two players are the ones who had to do all the hard work, and they made it as easy as it gets for Mateer, did he really bounce back? Mateer still had some pretty bad throws in the fourth quarter that weren’t as on target as they could have been.
Not to mention, Jaren Kanak and JaVonnie Gibson did a lot of work for Mateer in getting them down the field. Kanak, specifically, caught two checkdowns where he made the yards more than what the play was drawn up to get.
Hawkins should have gotten a chance, if we are being honest. But it doesn’t really matter now that we know the team won.
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