North Texas 2025 Season Rewatch: Mestemaker Breaks Record, Mean Green Overcome Slow Start

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GAME 1 | GAME 2 | GAME 3 | GAME 4 | GAME 5 | GAME 6 | GAME 7

After a Friday night in Charlotte, Drew Mestemaker had to be a shoo-in to finish with the national lead in passing yards.

North Texas traveled to North Carolina for a Friday night game against Charlotte. It wasn’t always the cleanest, but the Mean Green went back home with a 54-20 win while advancing to 7-1 on the season.

In preparation for Oklahoma State’s 2026 season, we’re going back and watching North Texas’ 2025 season. Here are some takeaways from this game against Charlotte.

Drew Mestemaker Sets American Conference Record for Passing Yards in a Game

With the Mean Green already up 47-20 late in the fourth quarter, Eric Morris sent Drew Mestemaker back on the field, but after after a completion that got UNT to Charlotte’s 32-yard line, Mestemaker was jogging off the field with his arms in the air.

That 12-yard completion to Simeon Evans gave Mestemaker 608 passing yards for the game, which is an American Conference record.

Mestemaker finished 37-for-49 for the 608 yards and four touchdowns. The numbers could’ve been more gaudy. In the first half, Terrence Lewis dropped a pass that hit him in the chest behind the Charlotte defense, one of three drops UNT had on the game.

Mestemaker was also pressured 14 times in this game and was sacked on three occasions. Some of that probably has to do with the 49 pass attempts.

To put an OSU spin on this, the Cowboys didn’t throw for half Mestemaker’s total in a game all last season, with the most being the 291 yards the Cowboys threw for against Baylor.

Had Mestemaker had that game as a Cowboy, it would have been an OSU record. OSU’s current record belongs to Mason Rudolph when he threw for 540 yards against Pitt in 2016.

North Texas Responds to Being in a Scrap

The things I knew about this game going into it were that UNT won by 34 and Drew Mestemaker threw for 608 yards.

But this wasn’t as simple as it sounded.

I would consider this the first outright bad team the Mean Green played this season (Charlotte finished 1-11), but things started a little weird on a Friday night in the road.

Charlotte was 1-6 entering this game and hadn’t held a lead in three weeks going into this. But with all that, Charlotte was up 20-17 in the third quarter before the Mean Green woke up and started dominating.

UNT did have two turnovers in the red zone, which certainly didn’t help matters, and then Charlotte just couldn’t keep the pace. UNT outscored Charlotte 27-0 in the fourth quarter to make the score line look how many thought it would.

Other Notes

• A few fun facts about Charlotte: former OSU defensive coordinator Bryan Nardo coaches Charlotte’s safeties last season. Nardo is now a senior defensive assistant at Minnesota.

• Former Cowboy Yamil Talib intercepted Mestemaker in this game, just Mestemaker’s fourth pick of the season. Talib is the nephew of former NFL corner Aqib Talib and walked on to OSU in 2024.

• UNT’s first drive ended in a 42-yard back-shoulder fade to Cameron Dorner for a touchdown. Mestemaker was 42 yards away from this guy, and put the ball right here:

• Today in fun fourth down moments: Eric Morris elected to go for it on 4th-and-9 from the Charlotte 36-yard line. Did not work in this instance, but it’s another example that Morris is not afraid to keep his offense on the field.

• Charlotte also went for it on fourth down, attempting a fake punt deep in its own territory that got sniffed out instantly. In some ways, it was the start of the route.

• Wyatt Young had another huge day (which makes sense considering his QB had 608 yards).

Young finished with nine catches for 190 yards and a touchdown. A good chunk of that came on a little tunnel screen where Young caught the ball just in front of the line of scrimmage and ran 70 yards to the house. I continue to be impressed with how good Young is with the ball in his hands, as he weaved in and out of traffic all the way to the house.

• After Mestemaker got to the sideline following his record, the TV camera showed this shot, which I found funny because it’s made up mostly of people at OSU now: