Oklahoma's QB coach details John Mateer's offseason development
John Mateer and the other OU quarterbacks are getting coached up by proven QB developers this offseason.
The 2025 season was an up-and-down one for returning Oklahoma Sooners starting quarterback John Mateer, and he told reporters on Wednesday that he'd been working hard to improve a number of facets of his game this offseason. On Saturday, one of the coaches that works most closely with him elaborated on the work that was put in this winter. Speaking to the media for the first time in his two years as a Sooner, quarterbacks coach John Kuceyeski had plenty to say about Mateer's first year at OU, and the development he's already seen since the season ended.
Kuceyeski came to Oklahoma along with offensive coordinator/quarterbacks coach Ben Arbuckle, after the pair spent the 2022 season together at Western Kentucky and the 2023 and 2024 seasons together at Washington State, where they coached Mateer. Kuceyeski earned a promotion this offseason from senior offensive analyst to quarterbacks coach. Together, Arbuckle and Kuceyeski lead the way in coaching up the Oklahoma quarterbacks, as head coach Brent Venables has made sure not to repeat his mistakes of the 2024 season.
That year, he installed Seth Littrell, who had never been a QBs coach, into the role to replace Jeff Lebby, and filled out the offensive coaching staff with analysts to help Littrell coach up the signal-callers. Quarterback play suffered as a result, and after Littrell was fired, one of those analysts, former Duke offensive coordinator Kevin Johns, became the QBs coach, but the damage had already been done. As OU has revamped the offense, going in a totally different direction for 2025 and 2026, Venables has made sure that his quarterbacks are being coached up by proven QB developers in Arbuckle and Kuceyeski.
One way that Kuceyeski has been trying to help Mateer grow is by making video clips that included some of Mateer’s mistakes from a season ago. "That’s really hard for anybody to learn from," Kuceyeski said. "Then we kind of made our big rocks of, ‘Hey, where can we get progress in the spring first?
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