Eric Morris knew his Oklahoma State football team was better than what they showed in last week's season opener. Beating No. 6 Oregon at home, however, with a slew of North Texas transfers was even better than he could've drawn up for his home opener as the Cowboys' first-year coach. Pandemonium ensue inside Boone Pickens Stadium, where Oklahoma State ended its program-worst 12-game losing streak and its recent ineptitude against FBS competition, a 21-game skid that stretched all the way back to an early-season win over Arkansas in 2024.
The emphatic win may even coax of a few poll voters into showing some love for a Big 12 team that simply took a week to work themselves into a rhythm this fall. The Cowboys shredded Oregon's veteran-laden defensive front on the ground with 237 yards on the ground, including 100-yard outings from quarterback Drew Mestemaker and Caleb Hawkins. Oregon's rush defense last fall with largely the same talent ranked seventh-best in the Big Ten yielding just 115.7 yards per game, but was gashed by the Cowboys' impressive execution and game plan.
Morris didn't panic after Oklahoma State's season-opening loss at Tulsa, instead choosing to focus on what his team could improve with the opportunity ahead against Oregon. "That's as bad as it gets, what we faced starting off the way that we started off with so much hype and whatever," Morris said this week. "Not happy at all that we lost -- we spent way too much time, resources, too many people over here that pour their heart and soul into this to want to go out there and have a performance like that.
"But the only thing is, I'm excited because I know exactly where we're at right now as a program, as a team, where we did OK, where we were just awful, and you start making a checklist of things you got to improve on." Ducks coach Dan Lanning has more tough questions to answer on both sides of the football after his team failed to impress for the second straight week. Oregon came back to beat Boise State in the opener, but had no such luck in Stillwater after giving up numerous explosive plays and failing to execute on a pair of fourth-quarter possessions with the outcome hanging in the balance. Oregon has played well in the road under Lanning, but that was not the case on Saturday.
The moment looked too big for the Ducks throughout after they fell behind early in the contest and again by 10 points in the third quarter. After briefly taking the lead to open the fourth, the Cowboys dominated the rest of the way. Oregon's margin for error is slim the rest of the way, unless the Ducks are able to correct mistakes and get right before the Big Ten slate begins in Los Angeles against the unbeaten Trojans on Sept. 26.
No three-loss, non-conference champion has ever made the College Football Playoff and there's still a couple of landmines left on the schedule for a team with more questions than answers after two games.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
