Drew Mestemaker wrote to colleges from home. He asked each one for a tryout at quarterback. No school answered, not even the junior colleges. He’d never started a high-school game at the position. Three years later he’s 20, he starts for Oklahoma State, and he has a two-year deal worth more than $7 million. NFL teams see him as a first-round pick next April.
Robert O’Connell tells the story in the Journal. Mestemaker played at Vandegrift High School in Austin, Texas, a powerhouse. He waited three years for the starting job. Before his senior year a highly rated passer transferred in, and the camp battle went the other way. Mestemaker was buried on the depth chart again. His coach says his next words were about how he could help. So he punted and played defensive back. He put on muscle to hit people. He learned how defenses hide what they’re doing. Years later that became his edge.
In his free time he worked on his throwing with Jeff Christensen, a quarterback coach. “He’s like a shark in a feeding frenzy,” Christensen said. It was Christensen who got him in front of Eric Morris, then the head coach at North Texas. Morris saw a 6-foot-4 frame and gave him a walk-on spot, the lowest rung on the roster. The coaches soon saw the missing high-school snaps as a gift. There weren’t any bad habits to undo. He was the No. 2 quarterback by his freshman season and the starter the next year. That season he passed for 4,379 yards, the most of anyone in the country. He threw 34 touchdown passes and ran for five more scores.
A deal with an end date
Morris took the Oklahoma State job this offseason and brought him along. The deal is a two-year NIL contract worth more than $7 million. The paper calls it a $7 million contract in one spot. Read it as the two-year total, since the paper doesn’t say $7 million a year. In his second game he threw two touchdowns, ran for a third and beat No. 6 Oregon. Through four games he had 12 touchdowns. No. 18 Oklahoma State was 3-1, after a season with no conference wins at all. Those numbers are as of when the paper went to press. “There’s guys that just rise to the moment,” he said. He meant himself.
Our read
Two planning points, and the first is about work (Career). The year that felt like a dead end was the training. Playing defense taught him how the other side thinks. Showing up with no habits made him easy to coach. Skills built on a detour still compound. Most of us have a year like that. It counts.
The second is cash flow (M5). A two-year deal for a 20-year-old is a windfall with a clock on it. The budget should run on the length of the contract. The headline number is a ceiling. And one note of caution. Earlier this month we wrote about programs regretting big quarterback money. Mestemaker is the happy case so far, and one happy case isn’t a rule. If a windfall lands on you, a signing bonus, a buyout, a short contract, sit down with us before it’s spent. The roof gets fixed in dry weather.