From Walk-On to Stardom: How Drew Mestemaker Got to Oklahoma State

The story of Drew Mestemaker’s winding road from Austin, Texas, to Stillwater, Okla., feels like a movie.

Oklahoma State quarterback Drew Mestemaker. Credit: Raymond Carlin III-Imagn Images | IMAGN IMAGES via Reuters Connect

Look at Drew Mestemaker’s Oklahoma State bio page. Astute college football watchers will notice something missing.

For most college players the bio includes their recruiting ratings or the schools that were also interested in them. None of that appears on Mestemaker’s bio.

What does appear in his bio is that in his senior year at Vandergrift High School in Austin, Texas, he served as the punter and the safety. He was an all-district punter and safety. But he didn't play quarterback. He was the backup.

Three years later Mestemaker is now getting Heisman buzz. There are now NFL scouts that believe that he could go in the NFL draft next April.

It isn't just that he was lightly recruited. He wasn't recruited. He walked on at North Texas and if it all seems a little Hollywood-ish to you, you wouldn't be that far off base.

“I mean I definitely went into it and had no idea how it was gonna work out,” Mestemaker said to reporters during OSU’s media day last week, in a video posted to OSU's official YouTube page. “But I like always had the belief in myself that once I got the opportunity like I could make the most of it.”

Drew Mestemaker’s Journey to Oklahoma State

Oklahoma State's Drew Mestemaker, | USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect

Mestemaker plays like he has that five-star pedigree. He thew for 4,379 yards and 34 touchdowns at North Texas in a 12-2 season in which the Mean Green reached the American Conference championship game. He plays like he’s been there before, not like he almost never got there.

Mestemaker did all the college camps while he was in high school. He said he never got any interest. He would walk away from a camp, felt like he played well, felt like he impressed coaches but never got a phone call. It was disheartening. He was stuck behind two future collegiate athletes at Vandergrift — Brayden Buchanan and Deuce Adams. Buchanan plays baseball at Baylor while Adams is a quarterback at Wisconsin.

It was also why he didn't give much thought to doing a workout in front of then-North Texas quarterbacks coach Sean Brophy his senior year in 2024. He figured it would amount to nothing.

Mestemaker was working with Jeff Christensen, a Dallas-based quarterbacks coach at the time. Mestemaker’s audition for Christensen was a FaceTime call. Per an ESPN feature in 2025, it was Christensen who called Morris and his staff looking at Mestemaker if they needed another “camp arm.” The problem? Christensen didn’t have any game tape to send.

Brophy went to go see him in person. Christensen set up the workout, engineered everything to show off Mestemaker’s strengths. At the end of the workout Brophy said nothing to him, according to Mestemaker.

“[Christensen said] You’re good, you’ll be good, they’ll give you a call,” Mestemaker said. “And I was like, ‘What are you talking about?’”

Turns out Mestemaker did run into Brophy in the parking lot after the practice and they did talk briefly. Brophy told them they didn't have a scholarship to offer him at North Texas but that he would call him in a week. He had heard that before. He didn’t get his hopes up.

A week later, Brophy called. Mestemaker was a walk-on at North Texas.

At North Texas Mestemaker redshirted in 2024 but watched intently as head coach Eric Morris worked with quarterback Chandler Morris (no relation). Mestemaker's goal that season was modest. He just wanted to make the travel roster. By the end of fall camp of that year, Eric Morris said he knew he had something in the walk-on. The tell? Mestemaker was checking the fourth-string offense out of plays in practice and into the right ones.

“That was something I saw grow throughout camp, as we got into scrimmages,” Morris said. “You could really see it as he started learning, gaining more confidence. By the time that last scrimmage came he knew he was battling for the number two position.”

Chandler Morris was a good role model for Mestemaker in 2024. He threw for 3,774 yards with 31 touchdowns and 12 interceptions before transferring to Virginia. That opened the door for Mestemaker to start. He had to win the job first. But, for once, he had the inside track.

Last season he became a complete quarterback. Everything Morris saw in practice — the exceptional mechanics the swift processing of information and the quality decision-making — came together in one of the best seasons of any quarterback in North Texas history. It vaulted Mestemaker into the national consciousness especially after his boss left for Oklahoma State and he could now test the market as a transfer.

He admits he shopped around. Who wouldn't? But his last phone call before he made his decision to go to Oklahoma State was with Morris. Morris left his young quarterback with one message — “Don't break my heart.”

He didn’t. He chose Oklahoma State. He chose the one coach — and coaching staff — that finally took a chance on him.

Now, he has an additional job along with throwing touchdowns and running the offense. It's blocking out the hype. It's not hard to do when you spent your high school career humbled by a system that barely gave you a chance.

“Seeing all this hype on my name it is crazy because I had none of that coming out of high school,” he said. “But I feel like you just gotta keep the main thing the main thing. It's cool to see all that but we still gotta go out and perform this year and win games.”