On Saturday afternoon, the Oklahoma football program narrowly avoided disaster with a thrilling win over the LSU Tigers to push their record to 10-2. While they won't be an automatic bid, the assumption from most is that Oklahoma has now done enough to punch their ticket to the college football playoff when it kicks off in a couple of weeks.
A large part of the reason why LSU was able to hang around in this game throughout its duration was the play of the Oklahoma offense, and particularly quarterback John Mateer, who has not been the same player since returning from injury earlier this season.
After the game, Mateer got 100% honest about his mindset as he tried to power through his struggles, particularly during a brutal third quarter stretch.
“When you have a third quarter like I did, I knew I just had to keep going out there and playing football… I was either going to hate myself forever or become a man,” said Mateer, per George Stoia III of Sooner Scoop and On3 Sports on X, formerly Twitter.
Mateer ultimately did end up working his way through the struggles, taking advantage of a bust in the LSU defense late to score a touchdown that ended up being the deciding score in the game.
Oklahoma has been a strange program all year, at times looking like a legitimate title contender, such as in their recent road win over Alabama, and at others seeming to not be anywhere close to that level, including in Saturday's slugfest against LSU, as well as their demolition at the hands of Texas earlier this year in the Red River Rivalry.
Not knowing which version of their team will show up in the playoff is certainly a cause of stress for Sooners fans, but for now, they'll be happy that they (most likely) got there.
