Oklahoma State’s road into 2026 looks nothing like the one it traveled just a year ago.
The program that spent more than two decades under Mike Gundy now belongs to Eric Morris, the 40-year-old North Texas head coach who arrives in Stillwater after leading the Mean Green to the American Conference championship game last year and within a win of likely making the College Football Playoff. That’s the backdrop for a reset that has been anything but subtle.
Gundy’s run defined an era. The former Oklahoma State quarterback became an assistant, then the head coach, and did things in Stillwater no one had done before.
He won a conference championship and got the Cowboys within one win of the BCS National Championship Game. More recently, Oklahoma State reached the Big 12 Championship game twice in three years from 2021-23 and seemed ready to step into the league’s top tier after Texas and Oklahoma left.
Then came the collapse: 4-20 over the last two seasons, including a 1-11 finish last year after a 1-2 start cost Gundy his job.
Now Morris has inherited a program that still has Big 12 ceiling, but almost no room for patience. The roster is almost entirely new, and the first question is just how much turnover this team can absorb.
The answer starts with the transfer count, because Oklahoma State has gone all-in in a way that even stands out in today’s portal era. Morris brought in nearly 90 transfers, including nearly 20 from North Texas, where he took the best of what he had built. He also mined talent from across the country, from power-conference programs to Division II.
The logic is clear. Oklahoma State needed talent, badly, after the last two seasons.
It also needed depth, which was a major issue a year ago. Morris is betting that a roster built around older players - many of them with at least three years of experience - can stabilize things fast and give the Cowboys a chance to move back up the Big 12 ladder.
If that bet pays off, the rise could come quickly.
On offense, the focus narrows to three players who may end up carrying the whole thing. All three followed Morris from North Texas and are coming off huge seasons.
Quarterback Drew Mestemaker is the headliner. Some believe he could be headed to the NFL next spring after a breakout year in which he led FBS with 4,379 passing yards.
Running back Caleb Hawkins was even more eye-catching in a different way, setting an FBS freshman record with 29 total touchdowns while rushing for nearly 1,500 yards in an Air Raid offense that still found room to lean on the run.
Then there’s Wyatt Young, a wide receiver who just landed on the Biletnikoff Award watch list after earning First Team All-Conference honors and becoming Mestemaker’s primary target.
That trio gives Oklahoma State a chance to be dangerous right away, and the offense has the depth to match. But the Cowboys’ ceiling will be determined by how those three perform together. That’s the difference between a respectable year and a real breakthrough.
The defense is a much murkier story.
There isn’t a true star on that side of the ball, at least not in the way the offense has its trio. The closest thing is linebacker Ethan Wesloski, another North Texas transfer and a Second Team All-Conference performer. Beyond him, Oklahoma State is banking on numbers, experience and a whole lot of roster reconstruction after one of the worst defensive units in college football last season.
That task falls to defensive coordinator Skyler Cassity, who is only 32 and has a family connection to the job through his father, who held the same role at Oklahoma State in the pre-Mike Gundy era. Cassity’s job is to sort through the transfers, settle on a rotation and find enough competent play to keep the defense from dragging down the offense.
That may be the whole formula. If the offense is as explosive as expected, this defense doesn’t need to be special. It just needs to be decent.
Whether Cassity and this wave of newcomers can make that happen in one offseason will go a long way toward defining Oklahoma State’s 2026 season.
In Other News...
Oklahoma State May Get A Huge Frontcourt Boost After Key Ruling
Oklahoma States frontcourt could be on the verge of getting a major lift after a court ruling opened the door for Parsa Fallah to return for a fifth year under the NCAAs new five-for-five model. The 6-foot-9 forward was one of the Cowboys most productive players last season, averaging 14.7 points and 6.0 rebounds before a torn ACL in February ended his year and left his future in limbo.
For now, the ruling gives Fallah a possible path back to Stillwater, but it is still part of a broader legal fight involving Class of 2022 athletes. The NCAA can appeal, so nothing is settled yet, but the situation is one the Cowboys will be watching closely given how much Fallah meant when he was healthy. [Read more 🡒]
Oklahoma State Still Has Two Key Lineup Decisions To Sort Out
As Oklahoma State moves deeper into camp, the focus is shifting from general progress to the kind of lineup decisions that start to shape a season. Eric Morris spent part of his latest update talking through the offensive line, where the Cowboys are sorting out key pieces while also managing injuries, and he said the recent scrimmage offered a useful checkpoint for where the group stands right now. There is also the quieter, but important, work of getting special teams organized, with a preliminary depth chart expected there soon.
The picture is still incomplete, though, and some of the biggest answers are not ready yet. Braydon Nelson remains a few weeks away from returning, leaving another spot in the mix as Oklahoma State keeps evaluating who fits best where up front. For a team trying to settle on consistency before the season starts, those unresolved spots at crucial positions are the kind that can linger until the staff finally has to make a call. [Read more 🡒]
Oklahoma State Still Has One Big Question At Receiver For 2026
The preseason Biletnikoff Award watch list is out for 2026, and the Big 12 shows up well again with eight receivers across the league earning spots. Texas Techs Terrance Carter Jr. and TCUs Jordan Dwyer headline a group that also includes players from Colorado, Houston, Kansas, Arizona State and Oklahoma State, a reminder that the conference has plenty of pass-catching talent spread around the map.
For Oklahoma State, the inclusion is a useful checkpoint more than a finished answer. Getting a receiver onto a national watch list is a good sign, but it also keeps the focus on a broader question the Cowboys still have to sort out for 2026: who steps forward as the clear difference-maker in a room that still needs one? The watch list puts the position group on the radar, but the full pecking order is still to be determined. [Read more 🡒]