Spring Position Previews: No Guessing Game This Season, Mestemaker Is the Cowboys’ QB

The Cowboys are less than two weeks away from opening their spring practice schedule.

With all the change that has taken place in and around Boone Pickens Stadium this offseason, this is perhaps the most anticipated spring of the 21st century for Oklahoma State football.

To get us as prepared as possible for the coming weeks and months, let’s start breaking down the Pokes’ new roster by positions. We’ll start with the most popular — quarterback.

Spring Position Previews: QB | RB |WR | TE

Returners

None

Incoming Transfers

Freshmen

Career FBS Stats

Overview

For what feels like the first time in a long time, there is no debate entering this season as to whom will quarterback the Cowboys in 2026 — Drew Mestemaker.

Mestemaker led the nation in passing last season as a redshirt freshman. If you’re on this website reading about this team, you know Mestemaker’s improbable story — didn’t start a varsity game at QB in high school, got on with Eric Morris at North Texas and, voila, he became Morris’ latest QB guru datapoint.

Grant Jordan comes in to be a veteran hand behind the still-young Mestemaker. Jordan split duties at UMass last season. In 2024, he started nine of Yale’s 10 games and earned All-Ivy honorable mention honors after completing 66.4% of his passes for 1,938 yards and 22 touchdowns while running for another 360 yards and five scores.

Morris also brings in a pair of young passers in Broderick Vehrs and Luke Tepas. Vehrs was pledge to Morris and Co. at North Texas before Morris took the OSU job and flipped his commitment on Signing Day. Neither was too highly touted a recruit, but Morris has never relied too heavily on star ratings to pick his passers (see Mestemaker and Cam Ward, among others).

“If I take a three-star quarterback, nobody get mad at me,” said Morris at his OSU introduction. “That’s all I can say. We have a set of qualifications in a kind of a formula that we have to recruiting these guys.”

Two-Deep Prediction

QB1: Drew Mestemaker
QB2: Grant Jordan

Again, it feels nice to have some generally agreed-upon clarity for a quarterback room entering a season.

The last time that happened was 2024 when Alan Bowman returned after leading the Pokes to the Big 12 title game, but to get to that spot, Bowman had to win the three-QB rotation in 2023, and though he started the 2024 season, he quickly got yanked to start Big 12 play. The QB position has been in flux ever since.

So, Mestemaker sooths that anxiety for OSU fans. Now they’ll hope he can be the first Cowboy QB to start every game in a season since Taylor Cornelius in 2018.