TAMPA, Fla. \u2014 Oklahoma was first up at the SEC Media Days on Monday, and coach Brent Venables didn\u2019t waste any time setting the Sooners\u2019 narrative.<\/p>\n
\u201cHard to kill, what does it mean?\u201d Venables said rhetorically, asked of a Sooners mantra that carried over from last season.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt means all the things we want to be about as a program; stick-to-itiveness, a program built on toughness,\u201d he said. \u201cFor our guys, man, each and every week is going to be a bloodbath. \u2026 The most physical teams win at the end of the day.\u201d<\/p>\n
Oklahoma proved \u201chard to kill\u201d last season, closing the regular season with four consecutive wins over Tennessee (33-27), Alabama (23-21), Missouri (17-6) and LSU (17-13) to find its way into the College Football Playoff. <\/p>\n
A 34-24 loss to the Crimson Tide in the first round of the CFP ultimately ended the season, but not before momentum was built and quarterback John Mateer was back on track after undergoing thumb surgery earlier in the season.<\/p>\n
Mateer, who passed for 3,139 yards in 2024 and 2,885 in 2025, was among the early Heisman Trophy favorites last season. He said he\u2019s picked up a mentor in former NFL Super Bowl champion Terry Bradshaw.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe way he made plays and throws the ball around is old-school,\u201d Mateer said. \u201cYou take some of that old-school stuff and add it into your game, a lot of people aren\u2019t going to expect that. He\u2019s a great resource.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mateer said he made a new friend at the Manning Passing Academy this offseason in Georgia quarterback Gunner Stockton, who was also at the family-owned football camp that takes place annually in June in Thibodaux, Louisiana.<\/p>\n
\u201cGunner always has a smile on his face. He\u2019s a super pure guy,\u201d Mateer said. \u201cWe talked a good bit, and he\u2019s a great guy, super down-to-earth guy. We didn\u2019t really talk about the game.\u201d<\/p>\n
There will be plenty of time for that, but Oklahoma will need to get off to a fast start to position itself for another playoff run with games at Michigan, at Georgia and against SEC favorite Texas in Dallas among the Sooners\u2019 first five games.<\/p>\n
\u201cEvery game\u2019s big, right? You only get 12 opportunities, unlike baseball or basketball,\u201d Venables said. \u201cMy responsibility is to get our guys ready to play football all 12 games.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019re not going to sneak up on anybody in Ann Arbor (Michigan) or going to Athens, Georgia.\u201d<\/p>\n
Venables made it clear the Sooners know what they\u2019ll be up against when Kirby Smart and the Bulldogs play host to them in UGA\u2019s SEC home opener Sept. 26<\/p>\n
\u201cI think they\u2019ve lost maybe once in five or six years at home,\u201d Venables said, noting how Georgia had won 20 consecutive home games against SEC opponents before a 24-21 loss to Alabama last season.<\/p>\n
\u201cGeorgia has been the gold standard, in my opinion, for college football for quite some time now,\u201d Venables said. \u201cThen, obviously, Texas in Dallas is always a tremendous challenge, something our guys are ready to do.\u201d<\/p>\n
Oklahoma returns 14 starters, with eight back on offense (only USC returns more) and six on defense, This is in addition to what\u2019s arguably the best kicker-punter combination in the nation with 2025 Lou Groza Award winner Tate Sandell back along with All-SEC first-team punter Grayson Miller.<\/p>\n
The Sooners also return four veteran offensive linemen with a combined 104 starts in addition to Arkansas offensive tackle portal addition E\u2019Marion Harris, who played 1,694 snaps for the Razorbacks the past three seasons.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe got a lot of really good pieces,\u201d Venables said. \u201cThe real challenge now is putting it all together to build the best team we possibly can over the next several weeks and months.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe true identity of this team will be developed going through the hard stuff, the highs and lows and challenges of a season.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TAMPA, Fla. \u2014 Oklahoma was first up at the SEC Media Days on Monday, and coach Brent Venables…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":775273,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[67],"tags":[6177,399,14937,398,396,397,99],"class_list":["post-775272","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ncaa-football","tag-american-football","tag-football","tag-mcclatchy-tribune","tag-ncaa","tag-ncaa-football","tag-ncaafootball","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/775272","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=775272"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/775272\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/775273"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=775272"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=775272"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=775272"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}