The Good, the Bad and the Ugly from Oklahoma State’s Win over West Virginia

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The Cowboys went on a country road trip and earned their first Big 12 win in nearly two years.

But even though Oklahoma State got the win, it wasn’t all pretty. I won’t belabor the negative after such a fun win, but there are a couple things to point out.

Let’s take a look at some superlatives from OSU’s comeback win over West Virginia starting with the most encouraging thing about this team.

The Good: The Cowboys’ Resiliency

It starts from the top down, but the one thing I can say about this group, is that through four games, they’ve not shown any sign of giving up. That’s a culture thing.

The Cowboys stumble in the red zone repeatedly. What happens? Drew Mestemaker rallies his troops on the sidelines. He throws a pick. Then the Cowboys rattle off five-straight scoring drives. The defense gets torched on the ground and on third downs in the first half. Then they find a way to get off the field and make Michael Hawkins look human. This has been the trend for the new-look OSU in 2026. I’ll take it.

The Bad: Red Zone Woes

OSU settled for field goals on three of the Cowboys’ trips to the red zone. It’s something Marshall mentioned in his 10 Thoughts, but it’s been a trend for OSU this season so far.

The Cowboys came in ranked 15th in score percentage in the Big 12 inside the 20-yard line. Even worse, they rank 122nd (and last in the league) with just 47% over those red zone trips ending in the end zone. That played out again on Saturday.

It’s not such a big deal if you can hit Wyatt Young for back-to-back 48-yard pass plays. But at some point, the Cowboys are going to need to reliably get six instead of three. So, I’m sure that will be at the top of Eric Morris’ whiteboard over the off week.

The Ugly: Season-High Penalties

It probably won’t make the drive-time radio banter since they survived it, but the Cowboys had a season-high nine penalties on Saturday. They came into the game with 11 total in three games. That’s too many and several were very avoidable and happened at inopportune times.

OSU had an illegal snap that turned a fourth-and-2 to a fourth-and-7, killing a chance to continue its first drive. They also had two false start penalties. One of those was on third-and-6, which made the Pokes settle for a field goal attempt to start the fourth quarter.

There was a hold on punt return that backed OSU up and then another on an illegal block in the back on another punt return. Those field position plays could really matter in a closer game.

Again, they survived them, but those are the types of things that can come back to bite you. Especially the avoidable ones.