Eric Morris Believes Oklahoma State’s Turnaround Can Happen Quickly: ‘Watch Me Work’

STILLWATER — On Monday afternoon, orange confetti rained from the sky as Oklahoma State officially kicked off the Eric Morris era.

It’s been a long two years since the football program has given reason to drop confetti for any reason, but Morris thinks the Cowboys can get back amongst the contenders in a hurry.

“I think there’s definitely a formula to success now,” Morris said. “And I think we’re seeing that in the parity in college football right now. You’re seeing what Indiana is able to do. They’ve lost more games than any other school in the history of college football.”

On Sunday afternoon, Indiana was announced as the No. 1 seed in the upcoming College Football Playoff. The Hoosiers felt like a permanent resident in the Big Ten basement until Curt Cignetti arrived and led Indiana to two CFP appearances and a 24-2 record in his first two seasons in Bloomington, Indiana.

“They’ve done it with the transfer portal, and they’ve done it with developing and retaining players right now,” Morris said. “I think the unique thing is that 10-15 years ago, these programs were saturated with all the talent. Their twos and threes might be better than a bunch of people’s ones and twos.

“This new landscape has allowed there to be a pathway to be really good and flip a roster in a hurry.”

Cignetti jump-started things at Indiana with a sizable influx of talent from his former program, James Madison. It remains to be seen to what extent Morris will follow that blueprint, although it seems likely a few players on the North Texas roster will find themselves in Stillwater this offseason.

For now, Morris can’t publicly comment on which players he hopes will join him or whether the nation’s leading passer, UNT quarterback Drew Mestemaker, will be among them.

Mestemaker leads the nation with 318 passing yards per game, putting him 10 yards ahead of second-place Baylor quarterback Sawyer Robertson. With Morris calling the shots, Mestemaker didn’t just take first place because he threw the ball around so much more than everyone else. He also leads the nation, averaging 9.9 yards per attempt, putting him a full 0.5 yards ahead of Indiana quarterback Fernando Mendoza.

Should Mestemaker travel to Stillwater, this wouldn’t even be the first time Morris’ relationships helped him navigate a transition. When Morris left Incarnate Word to become Washington State’s offensive coordinator, Cam Ward (now the 2025 No. 1 overall pick) chose to follow him, apparently over other compelling offers.

“When I was going to Washington State, he had such a great freshman campaign,” Morris said in an interview with CBS Sports ahead of the NFL Draft last year. “It was tough at that point, and tough for a kid like that to turn down the money that was being offered to him. It was tough telling Lane Kiffin and Ole Miss he was going to Washington State because of the comfort of being a starter and staying in the same system.”

Should Morris choose to, or have to, start over with a new quarterback in 2026, he’s offered plenty of reasons to believe he can both recruit and develop a winner. Mestemaker wasn’t the only quarterback Morris coached who nearly found himself in the CFP this season.

Virginia quarterback Chandler Morris, no relation, started for North Texas in 2024 and came one overtime period short of winning the ACC and playing in the playoffs as a likely No. 11 seed.

Then there’s Sooner John Mateer. Morris can’t claim credit for developing him, but he did successfully recruit him to Washington State.

“Now our problem at North Texas hasn’t been the recruitment or the development piece,” Morris said. “It’s been the retention piece. How do we keep those players? Because right now, from our first offensive line at North Texas, there are four of those guys that are starting at P4 schools right now, that we couldn’t financially afford to keep them there. We have quarterbacks that have both transferred up and done good things where they decided to go.”

Speaking of recruiting, to this point, Morris’ has largely proven he can do more with less.

247Sports Composite recruiting rankings since 2018:

When Oklahoma State Athletic Director Chad Weiberg interviewed Morris for the football opening, he prepared an entire presentation filled with photos of the Cowboy facilities, just one example of how Morris was stepping into the big leagues when it comes to resources.

Morris didn’t need to look at a single one of those pictures to know he could win big at Oklahoma State.

“I said, ‘listen, with all due respect,’ like I said, ‘have you ever been to Incarnate Word?’” Morris said. “Maybe the worst facility in all of college football. And so I said, ‘listen, I sold a dream to parents in the worst facility ever.’”

Morris made good on his pitch by leading FCS team Incarnate Word to an overall four-year record of 24-18 (23-14 excluding FBS competition), which included a 6-5 finish in his first season and a 10-3 record during his final season. All of which amounted to a sizable improvement from the program that went 4-18 in the two seasons before Morris took over.

“One of the proudest things to me in the accomplishments that I’ve had, people know where Incarnate Word is now. … To be able to change a program, put it on the map and become a national powerhouse the last five or six years in FCS,” Morris said. “Like, I’m proud of that.

“Building things up and when people tell me I can’t do something, it’s one of the greatest motivators I have. I’m one of those kids that said, ‘OK, watch me. Watch me work.’”

He didn’t just help put Incarnate Word on the map. He turned North Texas into a near-playoff threat in three seasons.

At Oklahoma State, Morris believes he doesn’t have to build something as much as revive it. The OSU coach said he still views the Cowboys as the same program that produced guys like Brandon Weeden, Dez Bryant and Russell Okung.

“That also gave me hope,” Morris said. “We’re not far off from when that was.”

While those guys haven’t been in a Cowboys uniform in a hot minute, Mike Gundy’s Cowboys flirted with championship access a few times in his tenure, and would have at the very least played in a 12-team playoff as recently as 2021 if expansion had come sooner.

Morris’ remarks on Monday suggested that somewhere between Gundy’s not-too-distant success on the field, the passionate fanbase, and everything Weiberg shared with him proved exactly what the Cowboys could become.

Before accepting any new job, Morris said he forces himself to answer only one big question from a football standpoint.

“Professionally for me, it’s as simple as this,” Morris said. “Can we win a championship there? … My answer to that is, hell yes, we can win a damn championship.”