Cowboy Football Needs to Have a Breakout Player Next Season

Oklahoma State might need a breakout player to have a bounce-back season.

Throughout the past few months OSU has done everything it can to become a competitive team in the Big 12 again next season. After going 3-9 in 2024, OSU made some significant changes across the board.

In firing coordinators Kasey Dunn and Bryan Nardo, OSU brought in Doug Meacham and Todd Grantham as their replacements, with both coaches also hiring an abundance of staff members to fill out the coaching staff. Along with a massive coaching turnover, the Cowboys have also added an abundance of players through the transfer portal.

In the portal, OSU has added players from a variety of different backgrounds. With players coming in from smaller schools looking to prove they belong at this level, players from big schools looking for a bigger opportunity and everything in between, OSU could have plenty of candidates for a breakout player next season.

That is incredibly important for the Cowboys because they may need one player to steal the spotlight and become the face of the team in 2025. OSU has seen that type of thing happen many times in the past, and while it’s possible for defenders to make that type of impact, that breakout title almost always gets taken by an offensive player.

Most recently, that was seen when Ollie Gordon took over in the 2023 season, winning Big 12 Offensive Player of the Year and the Doak Walker Award to lead OSU to 10 wins. While it’s incredibly unlikely that OSU will have a player emerge as one of the absolute best in the country, it will need someone to emerge as a star.

Whether that be an incoming transfer shining or even something as simple as Zane Flores showing his star potential, OSU needs to have a big name on the roster by the end of the season. Assuming the Cowboys could have a household name other than Mike Gundy come November, they could be in the mix to do something special.