Washington State didn’t get the result it wanted Saturday in Corvallis, but the Cougars did come away with one clear bright spot in their 48-30 loss to Oregon State: Owen Eshelman looks like a quarterback who can stress a defense in a lot of different ways.
In his first career start, the redshirt freshman piled up 425 yards of total offense and helped WSU produce its best scoring output of the season. His 136 rushing yards were the second-most in a single game in school history, trailing only John Mateer’s 197 yards against Texas Tech in the 2024 season opener.
“We had a much better rhythm (on offense),” first-year WSU coach Kirby Moore said. “I thought there were some tempo elements to the offense, and we’ve got to keep building on that.”
A big part of that rhythm came from how Eshelman manipulated the offense on the ground. The run-pass option game gave Oregon State all kinds of trouble, with Eshelman constantly making defenders decide whether he was handing off to one of Washington State’s three running backs or keeping the ball himself.
That showed up late in the first quarter, when he sold a handoff to Maxwell Woods, then drifted right and used a quick pump-fake to freeze a defensive back in the flat before slipping through for a 7-yard gain. One snap later, he kept selling the run and rolled right for an easy 14-yard completion to tight end Jack Pedersen.
The best version of that deception came with 90 seconds left in the game. Eshelman faked the handoff, froze the defense and ran untouched up the right seam for a 20-yard touchdown, WSU’s final points of the afternoon.
His arm work was a mixed bag at times, and Eshelman said afterward that he needed time to adjust to the speed of the game again after not seeing that kind of action in nearly two years. Even so, when he chose to drive the ball, the throws were there.
His first meaningful deep completion came in the first half on a 24-yard strike to Branden Ganashamoorthy between zones. Eshelman stepped up in the pocket and fired with enough velocity to beat the coverage, even if the throw was a little behind the receiver.
He also showed touch. On fourth and 1 from the WSU 47, he rolled right and dropped in a pass to Ganashamoorthy for 13 yards, putting it where the receiver could make a play against his body. Then, right after the two-minute warning, he found Ganashamoorthy again down the left seam, floating a 40-yard touchdown that turned into the first passing score of Eshelman’s college career.
The part of his game that may have stood out most, though, was what he did when the pocket started collapsing. He never seemed to lose awareness of where the pressure was coming from.
Late in the third quarter, Oregon State’s pass rush closed in from multiple directions, with a linebacker spying him as another layer of heat. Eshelman still escaped, cutting outside the spy and bursting up the right seam for 23 yards.
Then early in the fourth, on third and 10 from the Cougars’ 25, linebacker Aiden Sullivan came around on a stunt with a clear path to the quarterback. Eshelman spotted him, tucked the ball and ducked inside just enough to slip the arm tackle before sprinting to the right sideline for a 40-yard gain, his longest run of the day.
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