‘It’s Gonna Be Fun to Watch It Sort Itself Out’: New OSU OC Doug Meacham Discusses Quarterback Room

STILLWATER — Doug Meacham likened his quarterback room to a peach field, saying you can take peaches off the ground or you can take them off a tree. With four guys who are relatively inexperienced, Meacham is able to take them off the tree and mold them into what’s best for the Cowboys.

Meacham met with Oklahoma State media for the first time as the Cowboys’ offensive coordinator on Thursday, and to no one’s surprise, the quarterback position was a big talking point. OSU enters this spring with redshirt junior Garret Rangel, redshirt sophomore Zane Flores, and redshirt freshmen Maealiauki Smith and Hauss Hejny. No one from that group has played more than five games in a season. Meacham said it’s an open competition entering the spring.

“With the quarterback stuff, I don’t know,” Meacham said. “We kind of met them and talked to them. There’s not a ton of film on any of them particularly, so it’s gonna be fun to watch it sort itself out.”

Meacham was asked specifically about Hejny because both are coming to Stillwater from TCU. Hejny played in four games for the Horned Frogs last season but didn’t throw a pass. An efficient runner, Hejny carried 15 times for 65 yards as a true freshman.

Hejny was a four-star recruit in the 2024 recruiting class, with 247Sports listing Hejny as the No. 201 player in the entire class and among the top dozen quarterbacks in the class. He has some familiarity with Meacham having spent time together at TCU, but Hejny told PFB that Meacham was also pretty good friends with his high school coaches at Aledo. Hejny said Aledo ran a lot of Meacham’s plays.

“He didn’t play much last year, so we’re gonna have to figure Hauss out, you know what I mean?” Meacham said. “I saw what he did at practice and stuff, but he didn’t play much. There’s not a lot of samples of him, so I don’t see him any different than the rest of the guys. We’re gonna have to figure him out. If he’s the guy that’s the most knowledgeable, the most comfortable, then he’ll be the guy. If he’s not, then it’ll be somebody else.”

“He ran a 10.68 100 meters, so he can scoot. But can he process? Can he solve the puzzle on the back end? Can he get us in and out of plays? It’s the same things all these guys have to be able to do.”

Running quarterbacks have typically played well in Meacham’s offense. The most shining example of that was Trevone Boykin at TCU. In 2014, Meacham and Boykin led the Horned Frogs to a 12-1 record. Boykin finished fourth in Heisman voting, throwing for 3,901 yards, running for 707 yards, tallying 53 receiving yards and accounting for 42 total touchdowns. Boykin finished seventh in Heisman voting the next season when TCU went 11-2. That year, he had 3,575 passing yards, 612 rushing yards and accounted for 40 TDs.

Hejny can run, but so can Rangel. Smith and Flores are also capable but have had fewer (or none in Flores’ case) opportunities to show it. Although Meacham has had success with runners, he said it isn’t necessarily a requirement.

“If you have a pocket guy, you’ve gotta have that one receiver that can make it happen,” Meacham said. “Like with (Brandon) Weeden. He could sit in there and make it happen because he had a two-time Biletnikoff award winner. If you’re not particularly dominant in that area, you’d probably like a guy that can move around a little bit. And if you’ve got both, then that’s lightning in a bottle. That’s kind of what we had at TCU those couple years. We had Trevone and those guys at receiver. It was kind of like the best of everything.

“That’s ultimately what you want, a guy that can process, throw from the pocket and access secondaries and whatnot and get you in and out of correct plays but also can kind of take off and adlib and make stuff happen.”