Dan Lanning watched his No. 6 Oregon team fall in Stillwater on Saturday. Oklahoma State ended its 21-game losing streak against FBS teams, which was the longest active streak in the country. It was the first win for first-year head coach Eric Morris, and the moment left him with an unexpected reaction after the game.
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“I don’t know if I can top this. I’m not going to retire, but I might think about it tonight,” Morris told reporters after the win.
Morris was joking about how hard it would be to beat the feeling of his first Oklahoma State victory. At Big 12 Media Days, he talked about eventually retiring to farms in northeast Arkansas.
His wife’s family are farmers, and he has bought farmland over the last couple of years. He described wanting to live on a farm someday, watch things grow, and have nobody talk back to him. He also said he still has “a lot of years of coaching left.”
The Cowboys defeated Oregon 39-31 as a 23.5- to 24.5-point underdog. Oregon entered the 2026 campaign as the preseason No. 2 and a national title contender under Dan Lanning. They have four straight 10-win seasons and back-to-back College Football Playoff appearances.
Meanwhile, Oklahoma State was 1-11 last season and 4-20 over the previous two seasons. The Cowboys had just lost 10-24 at Tulsa in Week 1 and were still finding their way after a roster rebuild of about 90 to 92 new players.
Oregon had beaten Oklahoma State 69-3 last season, and the Cowboys had never beaten Oregon before. No team on a losing streak of 10 or more games had ever beaten a Top-10 opponent until Saturday. Oregon’s nation-leading 12-game road winning streak ended. The Ducks had been 18-2 on the road under Lanning.
Drew Mestemaker made the upset possible. He went 26-of-43 for 317 yards, two touchdowns, and two interceptions. He added six carries for 109 yards and one rushing score for 419 total yards and three touchdowns. He was not sacked even once in the entire game.
“This is the best moment of my life, not even close,” Mestemaker said after the upset win.
The disparity in the stats between the two teams was astonishing. Two Oklahoma State players ran for more yards than the entire Oregon offense. Even in the passing game, the Ducks could only manage 192 yards. The Cowboys made it seem like the Ducks were the unranked opponent in the matchup.
Morris was hired as Oklahoma State’s 25th head coach on November 25, 2025, and introduced on December 8 after an 11-2 season at North Texas. His record with the Cowboys is now 1-1 after the loss to Tulsa and this win. Last year’s team went 1-11 overall and 0-9 in the Big 12, the program’s worst season since 1991.
Morris was not seriously planning to retire after one night in Stillwater. He just wondered if anything else could match this win in his coaching life.