Biggest Surprise from Oklahoma State Football’s First Week

The Oklahoma State Cowboys have spent a week on the field working toward the 2026 season. Here is the biggest surprise from the week.

Oklahoma State head coach Eric Morris. | USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect

Wednesday marked the one-week mark of Oklahoma State football workouts. Head coach Eric Morris and his staff started putting his team through their paces at this time last week.

The Cowboys have had five workouts and squeezed in a media day on Saturday. While the Cowboys are off this Wednesday, they have three workouts coming on Thursday, Friday and Saturday the last of which is expected to be the first of two scrimmages.

There is a lot going on. Morris is trying to re-make a 1-11 team that fired its long-time head coach, Mike Gundy. There are nearly 90 new transfers, nearly 20 of which came from his former job at North Texas. Only 13 letterwinners returned from last year’s team. There is a strong amount of buzz around the program, more than a 1-11 team should have.

That said, there have been many surprises the first week. Too many to compile, honestly. So which one is the biggest?

OSU’s Biggest Surprise After One Week of Workouts

Oklahoma State head coach Eric Morris. | USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect

The biggest surprise isn’t on the field. It’s in how Morris has reframed the conversation around the program in a week. Morris has done two major interviews with local media talking about the team, both nearly 30 minutes in length. For a new coach, there is a tendency to keep things close to the vest, especially when there are so many new moving parts. Morris has taken the opposite tact.

He’s been open about position battles across the spectrum, from the offensive line — where finding a group of five solid starters is critical — to cornerback, where there is a returning starter in LaDainian Fields but he’s clearly in competition with other players at the spot.

He hasn’t handed out “starting jobs,” but there are clearly only a few places where the Cowboys are set, including quarterback with Drew Mestemaker and running back with Caleb Hawkins. Even with Hawkins, Morris has emphasized the need to have three or four backs that can take some of the load off the sophomore.

Otherwise, nearly every position is in play, and Morris is eager to talk about it. Consider one question about the secondary. Morris hit on Fields, Mo Horn, Trudell Barry, Kollin Lewis and Kobi Foreman at corner and then Quentin Hammonds, Christian Bodnar and Evan Jackson at safety. He also talked about late transfer pickups in Jeremiah Piper, Bobby Deal Jr. and Markeith Williams

“Those battles over the course of these next couple weeks will kind of tell you know what type of playing time and what kind of rotations we're able to put on them,” Morris said.

He’s been open about freshmen receivers like Jabarie Thornton and Dayvon Standard moving up to getting reps with the first- and second-team players. He’s also not giving preferential treatment to his former North Texas players, though it’s clear some have inside tracks to jobs based on their talent.

It’s a surprise for a couple of reasons. Some coaches aren’t this open about these types of positions battles. They don’t want it played out in the media. Morris is walking a fine line between promoting competition and publicizing his program and he’s doing a good job. Second, he’s framing the conversation in a way that allows the message to get back to his players — nearly every job is up for grabs. No one is getting a job just because they played for him at North Texas or they played for a power conference program.

How Morris has set the tone, how open he’s been with outsiders about competition and how it’s filtered down to what Cowboys fans will see on the field on Saturday during the first scrimmage may be the biggest surprise of camp. And it’s a refreshing change.