{"id":215911,"date":"2025-10-11T03:59:07","date_gmt":"2025-10-11T03:59:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/215911\/"},"modified":"2025-10-11T03:59:07","modified_gmt":"2025-10-11T03:59:07","slug":"mack-brown-defends-ethics-of-leaving-john-mateer-injury-availability-in-question","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/215911\/","title":{"rendered":"Mack Brown defends ‘ethics’ of leaving John Mateer injury, availability in question"},"content":{"rendered":"

Saturday morning will be crucial for John Mateer<\/a>. The Oklahoma<\/a> quarterback is set to try and give it a go in the Red River Rivalry against Texas, just a couple weeks after surgery for a hand injury.<\/p>\n

Mateer\u2019s status has been the biggest storyline of the week, and he went from questionable to probable on this week\u2019s availability reports. But as the situation unfolds, former Texas coach Mack Brown<\/a> defended the \u201cethics\u201d of it all.<\/p>\n

College football injury updates entering Week 7: Latest on John Mateer<\/a><\/p>\n

When asked about the gamesmanship behind keeping Mateer\u2019s status in the dark, Brown pushed back on the idea OU was \u201clying\u201d about where things stand. He said the Sooners are simply trying to avoid tipping their hand ahead of the marquee matchup.<\/p>\n

\u201c\u2018Lying\u2019 is a strong word. \u2026 We used to call it, \u2018situation ethics,’\u201d Brown said on The Stampede podcast<\/a> with Vince Young<\/a> and Bob Ballou. \u201cIf it fit the situation, it was ethical, if you\u2019re a coach during the week.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is definitely ethical. The more gray he can leave it, the more question marks you have as the opposing team.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mack Brown: \u2018How different will the 2 schemes be?\u2019<\/p>\n

If Mateer is not able to suit up Saturday at the Cotton Bowl, Michael Hawkins<\/a> would be in line to start. He started last year\u2019s Red River Rivalry game, but struggled as Oklahoma scored just three points.<\/p>\n

Mack Brown pointed that out, as well, and said the offense is sure to look different if Mateer \u2013 who was the Heisman Trophy favorite when he went down \u2013 is able to play. But regardless of who\u2019s under center, he said Texas needs to make sure to keep Oklahoma quiet out of the gate and avoid allowing a similar start that DJ Lagway<\/a> had for Florida<\/a> last game.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou say, you played Hawkins last year, he struggled. You sacked him six times,\u201d Brown said. \u201cSo you\u2019re thinking, if you play him, he\u2019s still not where Mateer\u2019s going to be. Mateer, he\u2019s up for the Heisman. How different will the two schemes be? That\u2019s what you\u2019ve got to look at, as a staff. How different will the confidence be?<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd then, regardless of who\u2019s out there, if it is Mateer and he\u2019s got the bad hands, you\u2019ve got to get after him. You don\u2019t go after a hand, you\u2019d on\u2019t try to hurt a kid. But you go after him, man, and that\u2019s what you do. You don\u2019t let them get started like DJ got started Saturday. And Oklahoma\u2019s really struggled running the ball. So this\u2019ll be two teams that, again, the team that figures out a way to have the short passing game and runs the ball the best is probably going to win the game.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Saturday morning will be crucial for John Mateer. The Oklahoma quarterback is set to try and give it…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":215912,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[67],"tags":[399,7317,122359,398,396,397,99],"class_list":{"0":"post-215911","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ncaa-football","8":"tag-football","9":"tag-john-mateer-22-little-elm","10":"tag-mack-brown-69-putnum-county","11":"tag-ncaa","12":"tag-ncaa-football","13":"tag-ncaafootball","14":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215911","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=215911"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215911\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/215912"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=215911"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=215911"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=215911"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}