Who Will Start at QB for Oklahoma State Following Zane Flores Injury?

Oklahoma State showed up in Tucson, Arizona, with what felt like, at the very least, a basic outline of an offensive identity for the first time this season.

Pretty much all of that, including the certainty that Zane Flores would start for the Cowboys, got erased in Saturday’s 41-13 loss to the Wildcats.

“He’s got an injury,” interim coach Doug Meacham said. “It’s an upper-body injury. I’m not quite sure the severity of it. But I don’t think it’s, from what I was told, I don’t think it’s like something he’ll be out for the season or anything like that. I think he’s gonna be sore for a few days, and we’ll reassess and see how it goes.”

Flores left the game after taking a sack on fourth-and-four with two minutes left in the third quarter. At the time, the Cowboys trailed 31-6. Flores struggled prior to his injury, finishing with a season-low 2.4 passing yards per attempt.

Yet, until his trip to the desert, the quarterback seemed to be progressing each week.

Receiver Sam Jackson V took snaps at quarterback, not for the first time on Saturday, following Flores’ injury. Meacham said he didn’t think the Wildcats stopped Jackson because they got a look at his quarterback package last week against Baylor.

“It wasn’t gimmick stuff,” Meacham said of Jackson’s role at Arizona. “He was actually going in and getting series as kind of a quarterback. A little bit more run flavor, but some of the stuff he was doing was, like, stuff that we do. We’re just gonna have to expand on that package and see where we go from here with him.”

Backup quarterback Banks Bowen, son of interim defensive coordinator Clint Bowen, took over and played all of the fourth quarter, marking his college debut.

Jackson will clearly have a role at quarterback moving forward, but the rest of the plan could be up in the air if Flores can’t go next week against Houston. Meacham said the team would “wait and see” when asked what the immediate future of the quarterback position looked like in the coming days.

“We have Bowen, who came in there at the end,” Meacham said. “And we have Sam (who) will probably get a little bit more with his little package. We had a little seven-play package for him that, at times, hit on a few things, but we’ll see how it goes. This is all new. We gotta get back and assess and see where we are and who’s available and try to get a plan moving forward and get ready for the next one.”

The Cowboys coach also fielded a question about Hauss Hejny, who started the season-opener and has been sidelined since after suffering a Jones fracture in the first quarter that required surgery.

The best-case scenario Hejny’s father provided to PFB in the days following the surgery put his son back on the field next week against Houston. However, this was always viewed as something of an ambitious timeline when it might be more realistic to look for the quarterback’s return much later this month.

When Meacham took over ahead of the Baylor game, he described Hejny’s return as something that was still a few weeks away. On Saturday, Meacham made it clear that he still expects to see Hejny, whom he recruited at TCU, back on the field this season.

“My last conversation with him, he wanted to play,” Meacham said. “So we’ll see how it works out and when that’s gonna occur. I think he’s walking now, and I think he’s gonna try to improve the strength of his lower leg and see what he can do. I know that he told me that he wants to play. So, I’m all for it.”