Can Oklahoma State Quarterbacks Make Necessary Impact in 2025?

Oklahoma State has plenty of positions to evaluate this season, but its quarterback could make or break the season.

Going into 2025, OSU is looking to bounce back and shock the country. Of course, actually making some absurd jump into national contention is incredibly unlikely for the Cowboys, considering all of the changes they’ve made over the past few months.

Still, there is a chance that the new coordinator duo of Todd Grantham and Doug Meacham can unlock some things with the roster they helped build and get OSU into the Big 12 title picture. Of course, for that to happen, OSU will need one of its young and inexperienced quarterbacks to step up in a big way.

With Garret Rangel and Maealiuaki Smith departing for new schools this offseason, OSU will enter next season with no quarterbacks who have taken a snap for the Cowboys. While Zane Flores was buried behind others and dealing with injuries and prevented him from getting on the field, TCU transfer Hauss Hejny had only limited opportunities with the Horned Frogs last season, never throwing a pass in his small number of snaps.

That lack of experience landed OSU in the bottom tier of power conference starting quarterbacks in PFF’s latest ranking. Of course, that bottom tier is reserved for situations like OSU’s, where the team has an unknown quarterback room compared to actually being ranked as the worst.

While that’s where the Cowboys stack up now, by the end of the season, there will plenty of data for OSU to rank elsewhere on the board. That begs the question of where OSU needs to finish on that quarterback tier list to reach its goals.

With a wide array of categories to be clustered into, the Cowboys’ best hope would be for their starter to land in the “Don’t Sleep On” or “Smaller Sample, But Flashes of Brilliance” cluster. Ultimately, OSU won’t suddenly have a superstar quarterback this season, and that’s fine.

However, the Cowboys need to have someone who can at least show flashes of star play or overall consistency. To put it in OSU terms: Mike Gundy’s team doesn’t need a Mason Rudolph or a Brandon Weeden to have success, but it won’t do much with an Alan Bowman running the show next season.