10 Thoughts on Oklahoma State’s 20-13 Loss against Iowa State

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STILLWATER — Without a bowl to close things out, this season was technically shorter than many of the recent seasons of Cowboy football, but boy, it didn’t feel that way.

Oklahoma State lost to Iowa State 20-13 on Saturday in Boone Pickens Stadium, closing the year out 1-11. Here are 10 Thoughts on the game.

1. It’s Over

Even after the horrors last season provided, I’m not sure many could’ve predicted 2025 would be worse.

Six or seven (for the children) years ago, it would’ve been unfathomable to think OSU has gone 18 straight Big 12 games without a win. Heck, that 3-9 team last season was still good enough to hammer Tulsa 45-10, so that 19-12 loss to the Golden Hurricane itself seemed inconceivable, even after Oregon beat the Cowboys by 66 two weeks before.

OSU will enter a new era on a 20-game losing streak to FBS foes. But, after these dark days of Cowboy football, there is now a light at the end of the tunnel named Eric Morris.

2. Credit to the Guys

This will be a season OSU fans will want to put in the rear view, one that was no easy task to sit through. But it was super impressive to see a team fight to the end in a lost season.

Senior Day was a good reminder of that. There are guys who will never feel the click of a chinstrap locking into place ever again. There are guys who, until they start having children, won’t realize how much less catch they’ll play moving forward because there isn’t a football somewhere around to be thrown at all times.

For those guys, I’m glad the Cowboys fought the way they did. They finished within a possession of their final three opponents after suffering five losses earlier in the season of at least 20 points.

The season is over, and thank goodness it is. But there are a lot of guys in this group who can walk away with their heads high because when faced with an unwinnable situation, they didn’t give up.

3. Take a Bow, Clint Bowen

Over an eight-game stretch, Clint Bowen took a defense that was fundamentally broken for the better part of two years and turned it into a more than serviceable group — perhaps even a good group.

And Bowen did that while losing guys to the transfer portal and after he came to OSU to fill a role on the offensive staff.

OSU’s 2024 D gave up 5.41 yards per carry, which is the worst the program has given up since at least 1940. Bryan Nardo got let go, and Todd Grantham got in just for the Cowboys to give up 5.43 yards a carry in the opening four games of the year.

Since Bowen has gotten ahold of the play sheet, the Cowboys have given up 3.79 yards per carry. Since he’s had an open week, the Cowboys have allowed just 17 points a game.

After going down to the high school ranks before this season in Stillwater, Bowen has proven he’s worthy of a college job if anyone is paying attention.

4. Flores Had the Best Series of His Season, For What It’s Worth

This was, obviously, another woeful performance for the OSU offense, but would you believe me if I told you Zane Flores threw for nearly 100 more yards than Rocco Becht? Well, he did, and just about all of it came on one series.

Flores threw for 202 yards to Becht’s 113.

After the Cowboys’ first four drives accounted for just 38 yards of total offense, Flores led a 14-play, 80-yard touchdown drive to send the Cowboys into the half.  He went 6-for-6 on the drive, throwing for 65 yards.

Flores had the throw of his season within the drive of his season. On 4th-and-4, Flores ripped a ball into the tightest of windows to Shamar Rigby across the middle for a 20-yard gain.

It was put to where only Rigby could grab hold of it, and it was one of three 10+-yard completions he had in the series.

Like all of OSU’s offensive success this season, it was fleeting. The Cowboys had just three drives in the second half that exceeded 10 yards of total offense.

5. I Hope Gavin Freeman Stays

Perhaps the biggest example of this team continuing to fight was Gavin Freeman — sometimes literally.

The slot receiver from Heritage Hall knows one speed: full. He’ll catch a ball over the middle, jump over a would-be tackler, juke out another then get into a shoving match with the guy who finally was able to bring him down. There was one point Saturday where Iowa State downed a punt near Freeman, and he started getting into it with four or five Cyclones circling around him with no backup.

He’s fearless, and he’s electric. I’d be more than interested in seeing what he looks like in an Eric Morris’ offense.

6. Freshman Kobi Foreman Stood Out

Kobi Foreman didn’t redshirt in his freshman season in Stillwater, which is impressive enough on its own, but he popped the most he has all season in the finale.

Foreman, a 5-foot-9 defensive back from Dallas, was back on kickoff return and made an instant impact, returning the opening kickoff 28 yards to set OSU up at its 33 to start the game.

It was one of four returns Foreman made Saturday, finishing with 84 yards (21 yards per return).

In this game alone, Foreman climbed to the top of OSU’s kick return list, as Sam Jackson V was leading the way with 67 kick return yards entering the game. With two previous returns, Foreman is up to 114 yards on a 19-yard average (the average is also a team-best).

How does that translate to the defensive side of the ball remains to be seen as Foreman’s career progresses, but at the very least, he has some explosiveness.

7. Not Even the Coin Tosses Went OSU’s Way

The Cowboys obviously didn’t have a ton of success on the football field this year, but you know where they were almost equally bad? The coin toss.

After the Cyclones won the coin toss Saturday, it meant OSU finished 2-10 on tosses this season. Both wins came on the road — at Arizona and at Texas Tech.

They tell me coin tosses are supposed to be a 50% chance of going your way, but they’ve gone the Cowboys’ way about 17% of the time this year.

When it rains, it pours. Nothing went the Cowboys’ way.

8. Sliding Doors Moments of the 2025 Season

Throughout different points in the year, Mike Gundy and Doug Meacham each noted after games how a handful of plays decided the outcome. It’s had me thinking whether any moments could’ve seen this season go differently.

The first is probably the most obvious: What happens if Hauss Hejny was healthy all year? An impossible answer to know, but a painful question to ponder after watching this offense limp to the finish line, averaging 11 points a game over the final three weeks.

I don’t know that Hejny, as good as he looked in those three series, was enough to fully overcome the overall struggles of the season. But, you wonder if OSU could’ve finished the year on a three-game winning streak, given the OSU D gave up, on average, 17 points across the past three games.

Another sliding doors moment was what if Bowen had been the Cowboys’ DC from the jump? It’s easy to look back and wonder that now, but it would’ve came out of nowhere had Gundy hired a guy who was coaching high school ball to run his defense. If you thought people flipped out when he hired Nardo from the D-II ranks, what would that have looked like hiring a high school coach?

Lastly, what would this year have looked like had Gundy been able to see it through? For starters, unless there was some exit plan in place, it’s hard to imagine that the Cowboys have Eric Morris signed to a deal at this point. As for the on-field product, it’s tough to say. Gundy is a darn good coach, but the results over the past few seasons don’t breed a ton of confidence that things would’ve been much different there.

9. OSU Did a Good Job of Getting out of the Lane Kiffin Domino Tumble

The biggest story line in college football right now isn’t something that’s happening off the field. It’s Lane Kiffin’s looming decision.

As of writing, it still hasn’t been announced whether Kiffin will stay at Ole Miss or accept the LSU job. Whatever he decides to do looks like it will kick an already hectic coaching carousel into overdrive.

But OSU fans can rest easy going into next week knowing they already have their guy.

The Cowboys’ coaching search started so early in the season that athletic director Chad Weiberg was able to wrap it up before Thanksgiving with the hiring of North Texas’ Eric Morris.

Now, the Cowboys will still have to wait for Morris to finish up in Denton, but that’s a small price to pay considering other searches are about to be in about a monthlong sprint ahead of the transfer portal opening and will all be going head to head with one another for candidates.

10. New Era on Deck

I was born in 1995, which means I technically lived through the Bob Simmons and Les Miles Eras. And while I remember a couple Miles moments (see: Let ‘er rip), just about all of my OSU football memories involve Mike Gundy being on the OSU sideline.

That obviously changed on an interim basis this year, but we’ll get to see what an OSU program can look like under someone other than Gundy.

In a lot of ways, that’s spooky. Gundy was, for the most part, a model of consistent success. Eighteen straight bowl games. Eight double-digit win seasons.

In other ways, it’s exciting. It doesn’t feel as if OSU has truly played the new era game to this point. What does a Cowboy football team that embraces some of the new situations of the sport look like? And more than that, Gundy helped build the infrastructure of OSU football. This’ll be the first time an OSU coach other than Gundy has had this nice stadium, the indoor facility and more.

Morris checks a lot of boxes as a hire, as well. At the very least, it looks as if OSU will start moving the football again (which after watching this season, thank goodness).

It’s a voyage into the unknown that brings much more excitement than concern, but Saturday also acts as a good point to look back at just how far the program has come.