Week 3 is a serious test case for QB John Mateer and the Oklahoma offense

The Saturday night football game at the Palace on the Prairie against New Mexico has taken on increased importance from the time that non-conference opponent was first signed as the Week 3 game on the 2026 Oklahoma schedule.

Winning is always of importance for an Oklahoma team in any year and at any point in the schedule, but the stakes for the Sooners in Saturday's game run much deeper than winning. With huge games against Nos. 1 and 2 in the country sitting straight ahead on the schedule, the rest of the season could well be defined by what Oklahoma demonstrates on offense against New Mexico.

The Sooners find themselves at a critical crossroads in their season. Over the next three weeks, Oklahoma will go on the road to face No. 2 Georgia, followed two weeks later by the yearly trek across the Red River for the annual rivalry game with the hated Texas Longhorns. As of this week, Texas sits No. 1 and Georgia No. 2 in both major polls.

Before that, however, the Sooners have a game to play, business to take care of and plenty to prove against the Group of 6 team out of Albuquerque, New Mexico. By most measures, this is the second most winnable game on an Oklahoma schedule that ESPN analytics ranks as the second hardest of any team at the FBS level this season.

Oklahoma's approach on offense needs to change and quickly, but New Mexico won't be a pushover

Don't be misled by that statistic, though. This is a good New Mexico team that is coming to Norman this weekend. The Lobos are off to a 2-0 start this season after winning nine games and finishing tied for first place in the Mountain West Conference last season.

The Sooners might have served up some false hope with the numbers the offense put up in the season-opening 51-0 blowout over UTEP, but what we saw from the OU offense the next week against Michigan was anything but reassuring. Against a good, but far from great Michigan defense, the Sooner offense sputtered badly with seven punts in 11 possessions.

What we witnessed was deja vu all over again, as quarterback John Mateer and the Sooner offense suffered a relapse and a return to many of the same things that handicapped the once high-powered Oklahoma offense most of last season. The Sooner defense played well enough to win the game at Michigan, but the offense didn't and actually was the reason Oklahoma lost the game.

There is plenty of blame to go around on what went wrong with the Oklahoma offense in the Michigan game, but the bottom line is that Mateer has to play better. Yes, the offensive line is banged up again and underperforming and there is much to question about offensive coordinator Ben Arbuckle's play-calling and putting Mateer in the best position to be successful, but the Sooner quarterback still needs to be able to execute the plays that are called.

Mateer is in his fifth collegiate season and has played in 38 collegiate games, mostly as a starter. A player with that much experience and a healthy throwing hand should not be sailing passes high and wide of the mark. It's not just his passing inaccuracy that has plagued Mateer, though, in his time at OU. He was widely criticized last season for not having good vision of the field, not reading defenses well enough and for not making good decisions with the ball.

All of those things were painfully apparent in Oklahoma's offensive struggles vs. Michigan. We all thought Mateer would be better this year with a healthy thumb gripping and throwing the football, but that hasn't happened. He has completed only 56% of his passes (28-for-50) for 414 yards and four touchdowns in two games this season. There is only one starting quarterback in the SEC with that low a completion percentage.

"He's a lot more Tim Tebow than he is Baker Mayfield," is the way Tulsa World sports columnist Berry Tramel described what Oklahoma has in Mateer, suggesting perhaps that is the best way to utilize Mateer's skills rather than asking him to put the ball in the air 30 times in a game. Florida was pretty successful, by the way, using Tebow that way, including winning a Heisman Trophy in 2007 and a national championship in 2008 in the BCS title game against Oklahoma.

It is widely agreed that Oklahoma needs to run the ball more, with or without 12- or 13 -personnel, and rely less on Mateer's passing arm. Regardless, Arbuckle needs to make things simpler for Mateer and find ways to play to his strengths and work around his deficiencies.

It will be interesting and telling to see what Oklahoma's game plan on offense will be against New Mexico. Venables, Arbuckle, Mateer and Co. aren't likely to get everything fixed in one week's time, after all they've had all offseason to work on the same things, but we have to see some progress and positive direction with the offense.

At this point, in its present state of seeming dysfunction, it's difficult to know if the issues with the offense were ever really fixed or if they're even fixable.

All offseason, we read reports and heard endless discussion about the changes and personnel additions the Sooners had made within Oklahoma's struggling offense over the past couple of seasons, and how the pieces should now be in place to make it better and more formidable going forward. We aren't seeing that, which is both irritating and deeply concerning.

Saturday may be Oklahoma's last chance to get things meaningfully figured out in the offense. If not, Katy Bar the door because things are going to get a whole lot uglier before they get better.

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