Cale Gundy isn’t buying the full John Mateer hype, and that’s only adding fuel to a debate that has already split Oklahoma fans.
The former Sooners assistant, now a local radio voice, said on The Sports Animal that he has long admired Mateer but still saw the kind of uneven play that makes him uneasy about the quarterback’s ceiling.
"I love John. You know that.
You've been around John, I've been around John. I'm a huge, huge fan of his," Gundy said to Mark Rodgers during the Middle of the Day Show on The Sports Animal.
"But I watched a lot of film at Washington State. I saw his throwing form, I saw his throwing style, I saw great passes, I saw some very inconsistent stuff.
"To me, a good quarterback, you don't see inconsistency. Bad throws like that, that's not normal for good quarterbacks."
That’s the heart of the argument around Mateer in Norman. Some Oklahoma fans still wonder whether his 2025 struggles were mainly the result of the thumb injury on his throwing hand, or whether the warning signs were already there before the injury ever happened.
The truth, at least from the way this has played out, sits somewhere in the middle. Mateer clearly wasn’t the same after midseason surgery on the thumb, but the inconsistency Gundy pointed to wasn’t invented out of nowhere either.
Gundy’s opinion carries weight because of where he’s been and what he’s seen. He spent 23 years on Oklahoma’s staff under Bob Stoops, Lincoln Riley and briefly Brent Venables, coaching wide receivers and running backs and working as recruiting coordinator. Before that, he was a quarterback at Oklahoma from 1990-93 and played baseball for the Sooners, earning First-Team All-Big Eight honors in 1993.
He also watched a long line of elite Oklahoma quarterbacks come through the program as a coach, including Jason White, Josh Heupel, Sam Bradford, Landry Jones, Baker Mayfield, Kyler Murray, Jalen Hurts and Caleb Williams. That kind of background helps explain why his standard for quarterback play is so high.
Mateer arrived in Norman with Mayfield comparisons and plenty of buzz after being one of the top quarterbacks in the transfer portal last year. He then opened eyes by breaking Mayfield’s record for most passing yards in an Oklahoma debut, which only turned up the volume around him before the season started to slide once SEC play arrived.
He was leading the Heisman race early in 2025 when he broke his right thumb against Auburn in the fourth game of the season. He missed only one game after surgery, but he never got back to the level he showed before the injury.
Mateer finished with 2,885 passing yards, 14 touchdowns and 11 interceptions while completing 62.2% of his throws. He also ran for 431 yards and eight touchdowns, though his rushing production dipped after the injury as well.
That’s why the fan base is stuck on the same question: was the thumb the real problem, or was the thumb just exposing a flaw that was already there?
Gundy’s answer is pretty clear. He sees the inconsistency as a real concern.
Others will point to the injury and say that it changed everything. Both sides have a case.
What’s not in doubt is that Mateer remains a good quarterback. The bigger question is whether he’s the kind of quarterback Oklahoma is used to seeing in crimson and cream. At least not yet.
And with the offseason he’s had, there’s still reason to think he could be better than he was a year ago.
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