AUSTIN, Texas — Who does Texas Longhorns head coach Steve Sarkisian believe that his team will see at quarterback for the Oklahoma Sooners on Saturday in the Cotton Bowl, star John Mateer or backup Michael Hawkins Jr.?
“That’s probably not a question for me. Probably for Brent,” Sarkisian said of the Oklahoma head coach.
But Venables wasn’t particularly forthcoming during his Tuesday media availability.
“John is doing no good-on-good work. So, it’s Michael and Whitt [Neubauer] right now. If something
changes, I’ll let you know. But I think if you’re gonna play, you’ve gotta do good-on-good, right? Throw some skelly. Hand the ball off. Play on third downs,” Venables said.
Does Venables know anything about recovering from the thumb surgery that Mateer underwent in late September?
“I don’t know anything about the injury. I’m just going to cut you off. I don’t know anything about the injury. So, when they tell me he’s available, I’ll let y’all know,” Venables said.
On Wednesday, when both teams issued their initial SEC-mandated injury reports, Mateer was listed as questionable after dressing last Saturday for the win over Kent State with a brace on his surgically-repaired throwing hand.
“We’ll plan for Mateer. You have to — he’s a dynamic player. He’s the heartbeat of that offense, for sure. Everything goes through him,” Sarkisian said.
Second on the team in rushing yardage, Mateer leads Oklahoma with five rushing touchdowns while throwing for 1,215 yards and six touchdowns on 8.6 yards per attempt through six games.
Hawkins isn’t necessarily the same player who was overwhelmed by the Texas defense last year in averaging 4.9 yards per attempt, losing a fumble, and getting sacked six times.
“We played against Hawkins last year. He’s a much improved player. Like most young players, they get better over time. You can see his improvement for sure,” Sarkisian said.
Ultimately, though, Texas is is preparing for the scheme of first-year offensive coordinator Ben Arbuckle, a Texan who brought Mateer with him from Washington State after a meteoric rise in coaching circles.
“Coach Arbuckle has got a great scheme. We’ve got to prepare for the scheme. He’s a fantastic coach,” Sarkisian said. “They tax you a lot of different ways, varying tempos, formations, trick plays, quarterback runs, shot plays. So we’ve got to prepare for the offense as much as we need to prepare for the quarterback, which one it’s going to be. It’s more about the offense in our in our world.”
After playing quarterback at West Texas A&M, the 30-year-old Arbuckle got his coaching break at Houston Baptist as a quality control coach under rising offensive coordinator Zach Kittley. When Kittley left for Western Kentucky with star quarterback Bailey Zappe, Arbuckle became a Hilltopper, too, after one year as the offensive coordinator at Seminole High School.
That gave Arbuckle a background in the Air Raid offense that Kittley learned under Kliff Kingsbury at Texas Tech, a lineage that ultimately traces back to the late Air Raid purveyor, Mike Leach, who received his big coaching break when Bob Stoops hired him from Kentucky to serve as the Oklahoma offensive coordinator in 1999, launching Leach to Lubbock, where he coached Kingsbury.
But the Air Raid that the Longhorns will face on Saturday in Dallas is not Leach’s Air Raid — it’s evolved significantly over the last quarter century.
“Let’s go back to Mike Leach and think about him throwing the ball 60-65 times game and spreading the field,” Sarkisian said on Thursday. “So the pass game comes from the Air Raid, but I think what Coach Arbuckle has done a great job of, very similar to maybe Coach [Jeff] Lebby at Mississippi State, they tax you with the quarterback run game. So the quarterback run game has become a bigger part of the Air Raid offense for them,” Sarkisian said.
Arbuckle’s preference for using gap schemes with Mateer in the quarterback run game has translated to Norman, a strong fit next to offensive line coach Bill Bedenbaugh, who effectively used similar schemes for quarterbacks like Kyler Murray and Jalen Hurts over his 13 years with the Sooners.
Along with the quarterback run game, the modern Air Raid pays more attention to situational football predicated on down and distance and field position.
“They situationally are just better than the Air Raid was 15-20 years ago when Coach Leach, to his credit, he was true to who he was — it was 3rd and 1, he’s going to be in a spread set and might be throwing go balls, four verts down the field. That’s who Coach Leach was. I think that where Coach Arbuckle has evolved this offense to, they have all that, but they’ve got short-yardage offense, they’ve got quarterback runs, and so there’s a lot of offense that you have to prepare for,” Sarkisian said.
At the point of attack, Oklahoma isn’t as good along the offensive line as Florida, and doesn’t have a running back with the between-the-tackles ability of Jadan Baugh, who broke six tackles against Texas and gained 67 of his 107 rushing yards after contact. In addition to Baugh’s ability to consistently fall forward, he also flashed a phenomenal slide cut on his touchdown run that caused Texas redshirt senior safety Michael Taaffe to miss his first tackle of the season.
So while those are positives for the Longhorns, the defensive line does have to get back to defeating blocks better after losing their gap integrity against the Gators too frequently. When they were in the right gaps, they were getting pushed off the ball.
“We got moved around way too much for my liking of what we’re accustomed to around here on the defensive side of the ball,” Sarkisian said.
Behind them, the linebackers and safeties missed their run fits too often, and player tasked with contain failed to do their job setting the edge, including an egregious example by sophomore cornerback Kobe Black on the first Florida drive.
Black had his issues in coverage, too, replacing junior cornerback Manny Muhammad and trying to defend Florida wide receiver Dallas Wilson, who beat Black on a glance route for a touchdown and then manhandled him on a 55-yard touchdown catch.
Black ultimately allowed 88 yards on three receptions.
On 151 snaps this season, Muhammad has only allowed 22 receiving yards on eight targets, fulfilling a promise that he made to head coach Steve Sarkisian to step up his level of play after struggling down the stretch in 2024. Currently listed as probable for Saturday’s game, Muhammad would significantly bolster the Texas secondary if he returns healthy given Black’s struggles in Gainesville.
Even if Muhammad doesn’t return, the top Sooners wide receivers present a different physical challenge than the 6’3, 213-pounder Wilson — leading receiver Isaiah Sategna is 5’10, 182 pounds and second-leaving receiver Deion Burks is 5’9, 188 pounds. At tight end, converted linebacker Jaren Kanak provides pure speed, but isn’t currently an effective blocker.
Ultimately, despite Texas preparing for the Oklahoma scheme, the offensive attack under Arbuckle looks a lot different with Mateer triggering it.
“He’s instilled a lot of belief in that organization when he takes the field that they’re a better team than maybe they were before just because of his presence alone,” Sarkisian said. “So I think that’s something that he provides them on top of the skill set, his ability to run the ball, his competitive spirit, his ability to throw the ball out of the pocket, and his comfort level with Coach Arbuckle from their time at Washington State — there’s added things to that, but I think the one thing he does is instill belief for their team.”
