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Will WSU be able to keep QB John Mateer when transfer portal opens? | The Seattle Times
Greg Woods
Dec. 6, 2024 at 1:59 pm
By
The Spokesman-Review
PULLMAN — In his third full season as Washington State’s head coach, Jake Dickert has established a way to try to retain as much of his roster as he can. After the season, he meets one-on-one with each player to talk about their strengths, their weaknesses. Dickert asks for feedback on other coaches, himself, on the program at large.
“I love those times,” Dickert said. “But unfortunately, there is now an extreme business side of those conversations. Trust me, I’ve been Zooming and communicating with families because I think the one thing the second parties are doing is really getting the families — maybe over the kids nowadays.”
By
second parties, Dickert means ambassadors from other programs, who check out the Cougars’ program and look for players to pry away with lucrative NIL offers. As the head honcho of a program that often finds itself behind on the NIL front, at least relative to the power players in today’s college football ecosystem, Dickert has not been coy about his feelings about losing his guys to bigger programs.
When the transfer portal officially opens on Monday, Dickert is expecting to lose 15-20 players, he said. Some will be walk-ons who are figuring out their next move, he said, and others will be players buried on the depth chart who could get on the field sooner elsewhere. Still others, Dickert said, will be players who are “offered large sums of money.”
The Cougs have already lost one player, true freshman running back Wayshawn Parker,
who announced Thursday he’s entering the portal.
“It’s tough. It’s really tough,” Dickert said. “We show them why they should be here. We show them our developmental process. We build those relationships. But it’s just tough at the end of the day, when you find a kid, you offer them, you’re the only big school to do that. Once you develop them, people come down and do some things with that.
“So we’re just in a weird place at college football. It’s not just happening to us. It’s happening all the way around the country, and at some point we gotta get some real guardrails on building teams, because from a general manager standpoint, you never know who’s gonna be coming and going that year, and the position group could be decimated.”
Will QB John Mateer be one of the players the Cougars lose to the portal? It’s certainly at the top of the mind of Dickert and the entire program. Mateer practiced as usual on Friday, the first day of the Cougs’ bowl practices.
Earlier this week, former WSU offensive coordinator Ben Arbuckle took the same job at Oklahoma, an SEC power with the kind of NIL muscle to lure players away. Could Arbuckle bring Mateer with him?
The Cougars are doing everything they can to prevent that and hang on to Mateer, who finished the regular season leading the country with 44 total touchdowns, 29 through the air and 15 on the ground. Dickert said his recent conversations with Mateer have been “really good,” adding that the team is putting together a “package” for Mateer, likely indicating collaboration with WSU’s NIL team, the Cougar Collective.
“We’ve done an amazing job of putting together a package for John that I think is fair, and he knows his value here,” Dickert said. “He knows how much he’s loved. I think it really means something for him to be here. I don’t take that for granted. I also take a step back and wanna mentor him, wanna help him, wanna navigate him through this. The talks have been really, really positive, and we’ll continue to navigate that as they go.”
WSU is currently operating without an offensive coordinator or defensive coordinator. Earlier on Monday, before Arbuckle’s departure became official, WSU announced that defensive coordinator Jeff Schmedding had been fired. That leaves the Cougs without any coordinators for their upcoming bowl game, which will likely be the Holiday Bowl in San Diego or the Las Vegas Bowl, both of which are set for Dec. 27.
In those coaches’ absence, the defensive-minded Dickert will call plays on defense, and quarterbacks coach John Kuceyeski will call plays on offense. Kuceyeski does have experience as an OC, working that role at Eastern Illinois from 2019-2021, and he previously worked as director of player personnel at Western Kentucky, where he overlapped with Arbuckle.
“He’s worked with John all year,” Dickert said. “I think they’re in good sync, good rhythm. Love what he has done in-series, in-game, when he was helping Coach Arbuckle. I think he’s got that vision, and he’s coordinated before, so excited about those responsibilities.”
But Dickert also needs to find full-time OC and DC replacements. For those roles, he said, he has interviews set up for this weekend with in-house and external candidates. Dickert offered no potential timeline on those decisions, saying he “won’t be in a hurry.”
“Just when it’s right,” Dickert said. “Got a bunch of interest for this job. I think that’s the cool part when things happen — this isn’t just people that need jobs. It’s people that understand what we’ve done here, how we’ve done it on both sides of the ball, the culture that we’ve built here, and I think that’s really important. So I’m excited about those guys, and we’ll find the right pieces for our staff.”
Greg Woods
Washington State beat writer for The Spokesman-Review
