Head Coach: Mike Gundy is entering his 21st season with the Cowboys with a 169-88 record. Gundy is one of the longest tenured head coaches in the country and has brought a lot of success to Oklahoma State include a Big 12 championship, 3 other Big 12 championship game appearances and 2 Fiesta Bowl wins. Year 20 was the most confounding year of his tenure, despite returning a lot from a good team the year before they plummeted to 3-9, Gundy’s worst season yet. All of this led to a “STANDOFF” between him and the administration, but it ultimately resulted in him staying, now we wait to see if Gundy can get this back running again.
Program Outlook: Oklahoma State has been a consistently good program under Mike Gundy but before him their success was a little more scattershot. In this space last year I mentioned Oklahoma State as a program vying to be one of the Big 12s flagship programs and that they haven’t had a losing season since 2005, what a difference a year makes. There’s no doubt, after an complete collapse in all phases in 2024, this year becomes critical for the program.
How does the 2025 Roster look?: Oklahoma State ranks 94th in the country returning 47% of their production per Punt and Rally’s returning production rankings. They were top 10 last year and it didn’t help them, so this isn’t a bad thing. To help reinvent the team, Oklahoma State brought in 40, yes FORTY (I had to spell it out for effect) portal players this offseason, there’s also 21 freshmen coming in for good measure. Let’s just say there’s a lot of parts to come together here. Key players starts with QB Hauss Hejny, a promising transfer from TCU who many have slated as the starter already. Oklahoma State has lacked true stability at QB so Hejny is a huge key here. Ollie Gordon is gone so it’s next man up at RB, Trent Howland looks like the leading candidate there, we know this program always produces good backs. Talyn Shettron is the most productive receiver that returns from last year and TE Colt Ford has a lot of potential, but that’s not all help is on the way from the portal with star receiver Christian Fitzpatrick (Marshall) and big play receiver Jaylen Lloyd (Nebraska), I’m also fascinated by Terrill Davis who had a ridiculous season at Central Oklahoma last year. Continuity was supposed to help Oklahoma State’s Oline last year, and it was mind-blowing how it collapsed instead so this is definitely one of the question marks, and now they are starting over there. The defensive line will lead the way on defense. They have some guys back from this unit, but the portal pickups here were particularly exciting, Kyran Duhon (UTEP) was an instant impact pickup, while they added a massive 333lb in De’Marion Thomas (Vanderbilt), when combined with Iman Oates, it gives them 648lbs of heft on the inside. The linebackers follow a similar theme where transfers really step in to help. Bryan McCoy comes over from Akron to lead the way, while Malik Charles is an intriguing player to created havoc at West Georgia. The secondary will have experience at least, Cam Smith leads the returning group while Jaylin Davies comes up from UCLA to add a veteran boost to the group.
Screenshot from FBSchedules.com
2025 Schedule Thoughts: This schedule offers a good mix of challenges and winnable games for Oklahoma State. The non-conference starts with UT Martin, a FCS team that won a game in the FCS playoffs last year. Then Oklahoma State gets their massive challenge against Oregon and they wrap it up with the Turnpike Classic against Tulsa. Oklahoma State’s Big 12 draw is pretty tough, they get some contenders at home but the downside of that is playing a lot of the winnable games on the road, especially returning to Orlando to face UCF in a place that was a house of horrors for Oklahoma State 2 years ago. With the schedule they have, this overhaul is going to need to lead to dramatic improvement for Oklahoma State to reach a bowl, but if they are closer to the level we expect from a Gundy team they could easily become a massive thorn in the side of Big 12 contenders.
Final Thoughts: Oklahoma State took an aggressive approach to try to turn this around quickly. The good news is this is a point where Mike Gundy always seems to find a really good season seemingly out of nowhere, there’s some parts that need to come together to make it happen, but I’m not foolish enough to rule it out.
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