Someone can get caught up in Drew Mestemaker’s arm talent or the numbers he’s put up, but Oklahoma State’s coordinators weren’t interested in leading with either of those things on Thursday. They kept coming back to the same trait: how quickly he thinks.
That was the through line from both sides of the ball in Stillwater, where Sean Brophy and Skyler Cassity each pointed to Mestemaker’s processing, recall and feel for the game as the real separator. It’s the kind of praise that lines up neatly with what Todd McShay said last month, when he highlighted the part of Mestemaker’s game that’s hardest to see in practice - his brain.
“Our offense is huge, right, and you think about the success that Drew had early on,” Brophy said. “So much of it’s because of his mental capability and capacity, and his ability to process information and recall, which allowed us to have a lot of volume in our offense but also a tremendous variety and variance week to week.”
Brophy said Mestemaker has grown across the board, then noted that he’s showing up every day at 219 pounds. The official UNT roster listed him at 211 pounds last season, and the coaches clearly wanted him to add some weight over the summer.
But the bigger point for Brophy was how comfortably Mestemaker is handling more and more. The quarterback is spending extensive time in the film room, already knows the offense at a high level and can now be pushed with more information and different looks.
“We’re spending so much time with him in the film room, and we’ve reached a point now where he knows our offense extremely well,” Brophy said. “We’re able to challenge him in different ways and put more on his plate and show him different looks.
“And it’s talking about inches where ball placement is, right, as opposed to just completions. And so he takes all that stuff in stride so well.
He’s a football junkie. He’s always sending me stuff and talking through coaching points.”
That sounded awfully familiar to what McShay and his podcast cohost Steve Muench had already been saying. Muench, in particular, said, “I really thought this kid showed a great grasp of the offense and was more developed as a quarterback and understanding concepts and how to attack coverage than I expected,”
Brophy also described Mestemaker as a coach on the field, crediting him with getting teammates lined up properly and handling run checks at the line. Those aren’t usually the first things people attach to a young quarterback, but that’s part of what has made Mestemaker stand out.
There’s also the continuity piece. Brophy and head coach Morris are excited to have Mestemaker back for a third season with them, even though this is only his second year as a starter. During their three seasons together at UNT, the staff went through three different starting quarterbacks, including Mestemaker last year.
“It’s great because we were rolling through them there for a while,” Brophy said. “And so to have the consistency, I think it’s been great for us. But I think it’s been great for him as well.”
For Oklahoma State, Mestemaker’s move to Stillwater did more than strengthen the offense. It also gave the defense a quarterback it can battle against every day in practice - and one Cassity said can make the whole unit better.
“It is great to go against a quarterback, obviously of that caliber, consistently every day in day out,” Cassity said. “… It being competitive and continuing to sharpen each other’s blade essentially on both sides of the ball.
And so Drew obviously does a good job. If you give tells away and things like that, he’s going to expose you for it.
When he’s got good matchups that he likes to take advantage of, he’s going to challenge you. And our guys welcome the challenge.”
Cassity said Mestemaker’s background is part of what helps him now. Because he played defense in high school, he processes defensive looks quickly and picks up on tendencies and tips at a high level.
“With him playing defense in high school, one of the things that he does such a good job of is processing defensive looks extremely fast,” Cassity said. “He sees tendencies, he sees tips, things like that. He does a really, really good job of that.”
Cassity added that Mestemaker identifies where the ball is going early in the process and handles post-snap movement especially well. In practice, that means he’s able to pick apart mistakes and expose the defense when it gives anything away.
“And he knows where the ball is supposed to go really, really early on in the process,” he said. “So showing him post-snap movements and things like that obviously is something that he’s really, really good at evaluating.
So he does a great job of that, and I think he does a good job of that and exposing us. So when we give tips away and things like that, he’ll expose you in practice if it happens.”
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