How Drew Mestemaker Earned the Trust to Check Eric Morris’ Play Calls at the Line

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STILLWATER — At this point, Eric Morris has about a decade worth of data proving he is an elite FBS play-caller, so now imagine going up to the line and changing one of the plays he called.

Drew Mestemaker has found himself in that position of late, with Morris granting his quarterback more freedom within the Cowboys’ offense.

It’s worked in more than a few instances, with Morris noting Mestemaker threw a pair of touchdowns on plays he changed at the line against Murray State, and Mestemaker himself noting that coming out of the half against West Virginia, he made a check at the line to throw to Chris Barnes for a 52-yard gain.

Mestemaker said at North Texas last year, he was awarded the freedom to make checks, but he was a little uneasy about it at first, saying he’d often just check one route and hoped it worked.

“I feel like this offseason, he’s really just let me go up to the line and give me free reign, honestly, of what I want to do,” Mestemaker said last week. “At first, there was the kind of stress of, ‘Alright, if I check this, I need to make it work because I’m going away from his play.’ But at this point, I feel like me and Coach Morris have the relationship where if it doesn’t work, I can go to the sideline and say, ‘Coach, I’m sorry. I thought it was gonna work.’ And he’ll be like, ‘Alright, it’s all good.'”

Morris has been an FBS offensive coordinator or play-calling head coach for nine seasons before this year. Of those nine seasons, his offenses have finished in the Top 10 in total offense on seven occasions. On four instances, he’s had a Top 5 offense, and he had the nation’s best offense in two seasons (2025 at UNT and 2016 at Texas Tech).

That’s why there might be some hesitation in changing his plays because most of the time, they work. But Morris has often noted how bright his current quarterback is and how quickly he can process information.

Morris pointed to Mestemaker’s outing in Morgantown as an example of why he trusts his quarterback so much.

West Virginia showed a three-high safety look it hadn’t employed much to that point, but Mestemaker stayed patient and let running back Caleb Hawkins feast until those safeties started to roll down.

Then in the second half — starting with that check to Barnes — Mestemaker threw for 274 of his 389 yards, as the Cowboys ran away from the Mountaineers.

“I think over time, you build the trust in people to be able to go out there and execute,” Morris said Tuesday. “I think he has the best vision to see what’s going on in front of him, right? And I think, at this point in his career, he’s seen all the different disguises. …

“I think that just showed another step in his maturity, the patience that he had during the course of that game. He’s somebody that’s earned that trust over the course of time.”

But with a play-caller as heralded as Morris, Mestemaker knows that if he makes a change, he better at least have a reason for it.

“Today in practice, we had some play call against our defense, and I changed it and it worked, and he was like, ‘Why’d you change it?'” Mestemaker recalled. “And I was like, ‘Well, they were in man. It’s not the man that I thought they were gonna run, but it worked anyways.’ And he was like, ‘Yeah, it’s good with me.’

“I think as long as I communicate what I saw, and I’m not just checking it for no reason, he’s good with it.”