Who is Drew Mestemaker? Meet new Oklahoma State QB that helped Cowboys shock No. 6 Oregon

The Oklahoma State Cowboys rebounded in a huge way after dropping their season opener to Tulsa last week and upset No. 6 Oregon at home, 39-31. A big reason for the Cowboys' success was the play of Oklahoma State quarterback Drew Mestemaker, who threw for over 300 yards, as well as three total touchdowns.

It's a big bounce-back win for the redshirt quarterback, who had a bad first week against Tulsa last week. He also helped OK State finish with over 554 yards of offense, too.

Here's everything you need to know about Mestemaker's big day against the Ducks' defense.

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Drew Mestemaker stats vs. Oregon

With the victory, Mestemaker went 26-of-43 passing for 317 yards with two touchdowns. He did throw a pair of interceptions in the first half, including a pick-six in the first quarter. But he cleaned up his turnover issues in the second half, leading four scoring drives, including a rushing touchdown to give him his third touchdown.

Didn’t realize Mestemaker killed a guy on this TD pic.twitter.com/lbppUm3kHs

He also showed some nice throws when the pocket broke down around him: 

Oh Mestemaker wow pic.twitter.com/FFTxFL1UXH

He likely impressed the likes of Atlanta Falcons president of football Matt Ryan, who was in attendance doing some scouting. 

It was a drastic improvement from his performance last week, which resulted in a OK-State 24-10 loss to Tulsa. Mestemaker threw for just 249 yards with just one touchdown and two interceptions, and completed 59.2% of his passes. He also had a fumble, and two of his turnovers came in the fourth quarter. 

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Drew Mestemaker’s transfer from North Texas

Mestemaker is originally from Austin, Texas, and he started his career at North Texas under former Mean Green and now-Oklahoma State head coach Eric Morris. He walked on to the team and took a redshirt in 2024, but was named North Texas' starter last season.

He made his first-ever start for North Texas at the end of his redshirt season in 2024, during UNT's First Responder Bowl game against Texas State. He earned himself the starting job last season after he threw for 393 yards in the loss to the Bobcats. He lit up the stat sheet as a redshirt freshman last season, throwing for an FBS-leading 4,379 yards with 34 touchdowns and nine interceptions. He added five rushing touchdowns, as well.

The Mean Green made it to the AAC Championship Game last season and finished 12-2 on the season. Mestemaker became just the fifth freshman in NCAA history to throw for over 4,000 yards. His 68.9% completion rate and passing efficiency rating of 168.7 were both North Texas school records.

After his big season at North Texas, he had several offers to transfer to power-conference teams. Instead, he chose to stick with his head coach in Morris, who gave him his only offer coming out of high school.

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Eric Morris makes star out of forgotten QB

Morris found a diamond in the rough in Mestemaker, who did not start for his high school team.  At Texas' Vandegrift High School, he played behind both curent Baylor baseball player Brayden Buchanan and current Wisconsin quarterback Deuce Adams.

Mestemaker's quarterbacks coach, Jeff Christenson, knew Morris and put a bug in the coach's ear about Mestemaker, who he said was flying under the radar as a prospect. Via an ESPN feature on Mestemaker's journey via Eli Lederman: 

A month before Christensen called Morris, he'd watched Mestemaker throw for the first time on a FaceTime call. The 6-foot-4 passer was mulling a walk-on offer from Sam Houston. Christensen saw tools to work with and invited Mestemaker to spend a month training with him in Dallas.

"I'll take you out to see Eric Morris," Christensen told Mestemaker. "If he sees what I know he's going to see, you'll walk on at North Texas."

If anyone would take a chance on such an improbable project, it was Morris.

"I was one of those guys," Morris said. "The two-star recruit that nobody wanted."

Mestemaker was not rated by 247Sports coming out of high school.

If he keeps playing like he did against Oregon'a defense, his NFL Draft stock for 2027 could continue to rise.