Oklahoma State football's Drew Mestemaker is QB who refused to accept no | Carlson
· Yahoo Sports
STILLWATER — Drew Mestemaker remembers the day then-North Texas coach Eric Morris dispatched his quarterbacks coach to a Dallas-Fort Worth gym to watch him throw for the first time.
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Mestemaker remembers everything Sean Brophy said during that workout, too.
Nada.
“Coach Brophy just stood in the back of the gym,” Mestemaker said. “He didn’t come up and ask me to do anything.”
He chuckled.
“It was literally 30 minutes, and then Brophy walked out.”
Mestemaker, still a couple years away from leading the nation in passing at North Texas, then transferring to Oklahoma State where he reportedly has one of the biggest NIL paydays in college football, was left staring quizzically at Christensen.
“What … what did he say?” Mestemaker asked.
“You’re good,” Christensen assured. “They’ll give you a call.”
“What’re you talking about?”
The guy who’d watched him throw for half an hour, then walked out without so much as a word was going to call? Mestemaker had serious doubts, figuring he’d never heard back from Brophy, Morris or North Texas.
But Saturday morning as Mestemaker sat behind a table at OSU’s media day wearing his No. 17 in Cowboy orange, it was another reminder of Mestemaker’s unbelievable story. The quarterback who didn’t start a single varsity game in high school became one of the best quarterbacks in the nation in two seasons at North Texas and is now the face of hope for OSU football.
Fittingly, a program trying to resurrect itself has a quarterback who refused to die.
It’s difficult to say what’s more unbelievable — that Morris and Co. decided to take a chance on Mestemaker or that Mestemaker believed he deserved a chance.
A quick review: Mestemaker played his high school football at Vandegrift on the northwest side of Austin, but he didn’t start a single game at quarterback for the varsity. Didn’t start one for the junior varsity either. Even as a freshman, he didn’t start for the top freshmen team.
His only starts in high school were for Vandegrift’s freshmen B team.
Oh, Mestemaker played varsity football, but only after deciding to play safety and punter as a senior.
And yet, he still wanted to play quarterback in college.
“I feel like every ‘no’ made me want to do it that much more,” he said.
So he went to camps. Contacted colleges. Worked out for recruiters.
He’d feel like he did well. They’d say they’d be in touch.
And nothing.
But even as the summer after his senior season fast approached, Mestemaker wasn’t giving up hope. He kept going to camps, contacting recruiters and working out, even deciding to move from Austin to the Metroplex to work with Christensen.
Was it audacious for Mestemaker to think he could play in college even though he hadn’t started in high school?
Probably.
But Mestemaker says he refused to cash out.
“I couldn’t put all that work in and then just because of a few nos throw it all away and feel sorry for myself,” he said. “It definitely felt like punch in the gut after punch in the gut — ‘Dang, am I ever going to get my opportunity?’ — but I just felt like one day it would come around.
“Honestly, I was just looking for anyone to give me an opportunity.”
Morris, Brophy and North Texas became that someone.
After finishing his workout for Brophy that spring day two years ago, Mestemaker left the gym but found the quarterbacks coach in the parking lot. Brophy had nothing but praise for Mestemaker.
“We’d love to get you on campus, but we don’t have a spot for you,” the quarterback remembers the coach saying. “We’ll give you a call in a week.”
Mestemaker’s first thought?
Riiiiiight.
But a week later, Brophy and Morris called — and offered Mestemaker a walk-on spot.
What had they seen in him?
Even though Mestemaker doesn’t remember Morris seeing him throw in person until after he had joined the team, Morris saw the same things in Mestemaker that Brophy had reported back about.
“Just super polished as a passer,” Morris said. “There was zero wasted movement in his throwing motion, which is something we look for.”
Morris, widely regarded as one of college football’s quarterback whisperers, has a philosophy about tweaking mechanics. Because college quarterbacks have been playing for so long and their throwing motion is so ingrained, Morris doesn’t tweak upper-body mechanics. He might try to speed up certain things or fine-tune lower-body motions to work with what is happening from the waist up.
Wholesale change to upper-body mechanics, though, is a no.
So having good ones is crucial.
“Drew was as good as anybody I’d seen just as far as some of those mechanics,” Morris said.
“Now, the one thing we didn’t know and so obviously I don’t take credit for this as much is, we didn’t know how smart he was, how well he retained information, how well he processed when the bullets were flying,” Morris added.
But Mestemaker quickly showed himself capable in that regard, too, and he went from walk-on to backup quarterback that first fall at North Texas. Then after starter Chandler Morris entered the transfer portal, Mestemaker made his first start since freshman B team — in the Mean Green’s bowl game.
All he did that day was account for 448 yards of total offense.
Last season was more of the same. A lot more. And now with Mestemaker having followed Morris to Stillwater, Cowboys everywhere are hopeful of a Mestemaker repeat and an OSU resurrection.
Mestemaker knows this feels like a script Hollywood would reject because it’s just too unbelievable.
“Whenever I showed up at North Texas,” he said, “I was just trying to make the travel roster.”
He’s done way more than that.
It took Morris and Co. believing in him, but it took Mestemaker believing, too.
“I knew I couldn’t let that opportunity slip,” he said. “I always had the belief in myself that once I got the opportunity, I could make the most of it.”
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This article originally appeared on Oklahoman: Oklahoma State football's Drew Mestemaker is QB who refused to accept no | Carlson