Why Drew Mestemaker Threw the Ball Up Two Scores with 15 Seconds Left

Support PFB with a PFB+ membership — $8 a month or $50 for a year.

STILLWATER — Eric Morris knew the game was over well before the clock showed 15 seconds left on Saturday, but at the postgame podium he sounded like a coach obsessed with chasing something bigger than a hot start that has the Cowboys (4-1, 2-0 Big 12) ranked 18th in the nation.

“We’re at 4-1 right now,” Morris said. “We gotta get a week better. There’s no more bye weeks. Here we go with seven straight, and we gotta be tough enough to handle those situations and these places that we’re about to play.”

​That starts with a trip to No. 20 Houston (5-1, 2-1 Big 12) next week after the Cougars just demolished Kansas State on the road, 35-16.

That could be why Morris left his offense out on the field on 4th-and-3, resulting in a 21-yard pass from Drew Mestemaker to receiver Terrence Lewis.

“I told Drew to read it,” Morris said. “Sometimes there’s automatic hand tags. Sometimes if they’re going to zero out everything, then we’re going to take a shot. … Where we were at that point in the game, I told him to read it like he would on a normal down. That wasn’t a disrespectful move or anything. It’s going to be tough for us to get that fourth down. I knew they would have (only) 15 seconds to get two scores.”

Morris saw an opportunity for his quarterback, who has started only 20 games total (including only three against Power Four opponents), to get a valuable game rep where the Pokes needed to move the chains on fourth down.

As for the play itself, Lewis appears to catch a touchdown in the end zone. Upon replay, it looks like the officials got the call correctly, but for some reason the officials explained the decision incorrectly.

The official announcement made is that the receiver caught the ball out of bounds. The catch itself was an incredible effort from Lewis to jump up and high-point the ball, get one foot down, fall through the end zone and survive the ground.

“T-Lew is a dog when it comes down into the red zone,” Mestemaker said. “And you know plays like that, and so I knew I was going to him, and they just loaded the box up and left our guys one-on-one, and so I knew I was taking a shot to T-Lew, and I thought it was a touchdown. I don’t know about y’all, but I definitely thought it was a touchdown.”

The thing Mestemaker couldn’t see on the play, that apparently the head official himself missed, was that Lewis was forced out of bounds early on in his route. The official at the goal line saw it and threw his hat on the ground, indicating that the receiver left the field of play.

According to NCAA rules, if Lewis was blocked out of bounds, he can re-establish himself by immediately returning to the field of play. If he doesn’t, then he isn’t allowed to be the first player to touch the football. It seems like Lewis’ eligibility probably comes down to a judgment call of whether he was blocked out or if he re-established immediately.

Either way, perhaps due to the score, the officials decided it was not worth correction.

Bet Morris doesn’t see it that way, and Lewis will likely be coached up on how he can avoid leaving those plays in the hands of officials.

“Yeah, I mean it was huge,” Mestemaker said of getting the game rep itself. “That, I mean, just in a spot like that in a game, you need the first down. It’s not like we were being bad sports about it. Like you kind of got to do what you got to do to put the game away.”