Why Eric Morris Joked About Retiring After Oklahoma State’s Upset of Oregon
Eric Morris has been the head coach at Oklahoma State for two games. He is 1-1. And after Saturday night in Stillwater, he already sounded like a man who knows he may never feel this good again.
“I don’t know if I can top this,” Morris said after the Cowboys knocked off No. 6 Oregon 39-31 at Boone Pickens Stadium. “I’m not going to retire, but I might think about it tonight.”
He is probably right. That might have been the ceiling.
Understand what Oklahoma State walked into. The Cowboys went 1-11 last season. They lost to Oregon 69-3. They opened this year by getting handled 24-10 by Tulsa in Morris’ debut. Vegas had them as a 23.5-point underdog, which was arguably generous.
The losing streak was the part that should have been unbreakable. Twelve straight losses overall across two seasons. Twenty-one straight against FBS opponents, with the last one coming against Tulsa on Sept. 14, 2024. Teams buried that deep do not climb out by beating a top-10 program. They climb out by beating a bad Group of Five team in October and calling it progress.
Drew Mestemaker Followed His Coach and Delivered
The guy who made it happen came to Stillwater with Morris. Drew Mestemaker played for Morris at North Texas last season and transferred when Morris took the Oklahoma State job in November 2025. That continuity mattered more than any staff hire.
Mestemaker threw for 317 yards and two touchdowns against the Ducks. He also ran for 109 yards and a score, and his 10-yard touchdown run early in the fourth quarter put the Cowboys ahead for good. A quarterback putting up 426 total yards against a top-six defense is the kind of night you frame.
Oregon had every reason to treat this as a walkover. The Ducks entered ranked sixth with national title expectations and a track record of humiliating this exact opponent. They left Stillwater with a loss that will follow them into December when the committee starts sorting résumés.
What the Win Actually Means for Oklahoma State
Do not confuse this with a program being fixed. Oklahoma State lost to Tulsa by two touchdowns seven days earlier and the roster still has holes everywhere. One night of perfect execution does not rebuild a depth chart.
But it does something Morris could not buy with a coaching-clinic PowerPoint. It proves to the locker room that the plan works. Players who spent a year getting blown out now have tangible evidence that showing up on Tuesday in March leads somewhere. That is worth more than a recruiting class.
It also changes how Oklahoma State gets talked about. Programs coming off 1-11 seasons are invisible. Programs that just beat a top-10 team get their tape watched by every recruit and every portal quarterback in the country. Morris will use that, and he will use it immediately.
For Oregon, the damage is real. A September loss to a team that had not beaten an FBS opponent in two years is the kind of result that gets held against you in every playoff conversation for the rest of the season. The Ducks now have zero margin.
Morris will not retire. He just got the signature win of his career two games into a rebuild, with a full season still in front of him. The honesty in the answer was the best part. He knew exactly what he had just done.
Oklahoma State has one win. It happens to be one of the most improbable wins of the decade.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.
