By the Numbers: Breaking Down and Projecting Oklahoma State’s Stats Through Four games

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The Cowboys are a third of the way through their regular season, sitting at 3-1 and squarely in the early conversation for a trip to Arlington — just like we all predicted.

Although Oklahoma State has a bye week to get healthier and work on a few peccadilloes, it’s a good time to check in on some of the numbers and see where they sit among the Big 12 and (possibly) do a better job of projecting where they might end up come December.

Normally, I’d add the caveat that these include nonconference games and numbers might be uncharacteristically inflated. That the Cowboys should be expected to regress to the mean. (They still could). But this is a bit of a different season since the Tulsa game may end up being their worst offensive outing of the year, and their second game was against an actual legit Oregon team. So do with all that what you will.

The most important thing to remember about these numbers is that OSU’s trajectory has been upward. We can’t exclude the Tulsa game. But if we did, these would be some elite-level numbers, and the Cowboys could very likely make that 10-point effort an outlier.

Here are some of my takeaways from the Cowboys’ numbers through four games.

Win Total

At this point, it seems like it’s not worth mentioning, but the Cowboys won four games over the previous two seasons. There’s little chance they don’t far exceed that now. This is a different team with a different culture.

In our 2026 predictions, before Eric Morris had entered the cheat code into Drew Mestemaker, I said getting to a bowl berth is a huge turnaround in Morris’ first year. Now the path is laid for something special.

Gunslingers Again

Maybe you’re not like me. Maybe you’ve been living under a rock.  Maybe you’ve not been incessantly rewatching Mestemaker highlight vids on YouTube. If that’s you, let me be the first to tell you that the Cowboys are gunslingers once more.

OSU leads the Big 12 and is eighth nationally in passing offense, throwing it for 327 yards per game. In a very strange statistical tidbit, North Texas is ranked seventh, just above OSU at 342, as of writing.

Drew Mestemaker is third nationally and first in the conference with 317.8 passing yards and 11 TDs. And he’s spreading the ball out to his myriad weapons.

Wyatt Young is second in the league at 102.5 yards per game to go with three TDs. Justin Bowick is seventh at 86 and four scores himself. That makes the Cowboys the only team with two receivers in the Big 12’s top 13. With Chris Barnes’ at T-19th with 48.3 yards, the Pokes are the only team with three receivers in the top 20.

All the stuff that endeared most OSU fans to OSU? It’s back.

Don’t Forget about Caleb

Caleb Hawkins ranks behind only WVU’s Cam Cook in the league in rushing. He has 441 rushing yards and a pair of TDs in four games.  And he’s exactly on pace with his impressive freshman season at UNT.

In 2025, Hawkins averaged 110.31 yards per game at 6.2 yards per carry. Through four games at OSU, he’s averaging 110.25 ypg at 5.3. He’ll have to get it in gear to approach his FBS-leading 25 rushing TDs from last year though. He’s tracking for six over 12 games.

Defense Still Owns the Money Down

The Cowboys’ vaunted third-down defense ranking looks a little worse for wear after West Virginia, but it’s still among the best in the country at getting off the field.

OSU is currently sitting at 27.78% on opponent third downs, which is 16th nationally and second in the Big 12. The laws of attrition would dictate that they probably will rise up the rankings on a bye this weekend. But regardless of their rankings, Skyler Cassity’s defense is still tracking just better than Jim Knowles’ impressive 2021 group that finished third in the FBS at 28.64%.

It would be impressive if they were able to continue at that clip, but what we’ve seen so far has also been impressive. For what it’s worth, the 2021 Cowboys finished fourth nationally in fourth-down defense at 29.63%. These Cowboys are sitting at 22.22%.

This next guy is a big reason why.

Another 100-Tackle Cowboy

Ethan Wesloski is set to join the likes of Jordan Sterns, Nick Martin and Malcolm Rodriguez. The senior linebacker is fresh off tying a career high with 17 total tackles against West Virginia and he’s on pace to reach triple digits in tackles for the year.

Wesloski leads the Big 12 with 36 tackles. Projecting that out over 12 games and he’d get 108. He had 113 last year at UNT.

Record Pace for First Downs

This is a bit of an obscure stat, but we saw how important it was in Morgantown.

Oklahoma State is currently ranked third in the FBS with 110 first downs in four games. That’s 27.5 per game. The best ever at OSU was the 2011 team (shocker), but they averaged 25.3 per game.

This also falls in the category of a stat that might very well fluctuate. OSU’s 33 first downs against Murray State were the most the Cowboys have had since 2021. But it’s important to point out that OSU has had a low of 25 thus far, which was more than in any single game last year.

First Downs
Tulsa: 27
Oregon: 25
Murray State: 33
West Virginia: 25

It’s also important to point out that the Cowboys are ranked just 14th in the Big 12 in third-down offense, converting just 32% thus far. So how do you explain that?

That leads me to this chestnut…

Chunk Plays Galore

Oklahoma State is 10th nationally with 72 plays of at least 10 yards. In plays of at least 20 yards, the Pokes are second only to SMU. The Mustangs have 33; the Cowboys have 32. That’s eight per game.

There’s not a quick way to average that out among all teams, but if OSU plays 14 games, that would be 112. More than any team has had at least as far back as 2020. The most during that stretch was Texas last season with 108, but the Longhorns did that in 16 games (6.8 average).

We knew the Cowboys had skill players and a QB, but give due credit to an offensive line that gives Mestemaker time to cook.

Get Your Sam Keltner Jerseys

The first-year Cowboy kicker is 10-for-10 on field goals. It obviously doesn’t get better than 100%, but he also leads all of the flawless specialists in attempts. Next up is James Madison’s Morgan Suarez at 9-for-9. It’s the best start by an OSU kicker since Alex Hale stared 8-for-8 in 2020.