John Mateer has already cemented his leadership role among his teammates for the upcoming season.<\/p>\n
Mateer, Oklahoma\u2019s new starting quarterback, is not afraid to call a teammate out or help guide a teammate through a question or challenge. That is a sign of a leader, says defensive lineman Taylor Wein.<\/p>\n
Mateer is holding teammates accountable and becoming a prototypical leader at the quarterback position.<\/p>\n
\u201cJohn rings dudes up,\u201d Wein said. \u201cHe does a good job of calling people up and motivating people to work harder, stay longer and get any extra work in. He\u2019s someone that everyone could come to if they\u2019re needing that kind of juice or that kind of level-headed and clear their minds. He\u2019s someone that will pour into you.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a good feeling to have that in a quarterback.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mateer had the same reputation at Washington State last season, where he led the Cougars to an 8-5 record. Mateer finished the season with almost 4,000 total yards and a combined 44 touchdowns \u2013 which he led the nation in along with former teammate and Heisman winner Cam Ward.<\/p>\n
He backs up his leadership with his play on the field and has impressed OU coach Brent Venables with his humility toward the game.<\/p>\n
\u201cJohn had great success. He led the country in touchdowns last year,\u201d Venables said. \u201cBut the best things he can do is he just has tremendous capacity as a quarterback. I don\u2019t see a guy that is bragadocious. I see a guy that has tremendous humility, respect for the game, and is hungry to gain knowledge. He\u2019s performed at a really pretty good level against what he sees on the practice field every single day. When he doesn\u2019t do something well, he usually corrects those issues.\u201d<\/p>\n
When Mateer transferred to Oklahoma, he came to Norman alongside his offensive coordinator at Wazzu, Ben Arbuckle.<\/p>\n
Arbuckle, OU\u2019s new offensive coordinator, brought the offense Mateer had so much success with.<\/p>\n
For Mateer, that\u2019s been another avenue to build trust and rapport with his new teammates, teaching and guiding teammates through Arbuckle\u2019s system.<\/p>\n
Arbuckle, though, knows the importance of Mateer being a leader for the Sooners in 2025 and challenged him to become a supreme leader for OU. So far, Mateer has excelled at doing just that.<\/p>\n
\u201c\u2018You need to go make this team your own,\u2019\u201d Arbuckle said. \u201c\u2018You\u2019re the quarterback, go make this team your own.\u2019 How he has interacted with everybody in the building, the players and coaches. Built a trust with everybody in the building. By being accountable, relatable, by holding people accountable. Out there in the summer and someone does something not up to our standard, he lets them know about it. That was his biggest point of growth in making the team his own. And he\u2019s done a great job of it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"John Mateer has already cemented his leadership role among his teammates for the upcoming season. Mateer, Oklahoma\u2019s new…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":116943,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[1318,1317,1315,1316,62,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-116942","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ncaa-football","8":"tag-football","9":"tag-ncaa","10":"tag-ncaa-football","11":"tag-ncaafootball","12":"tag-sports","13":"tag-united-states","14":"tag-unitedstates","15":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114967802402358317","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116942","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=116942"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116942\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/116943"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=116942"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=116942"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=116942"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}