Oklahoma State stuns No. 6 Oregon, ending 21-game FBS skid

STILLWATER, Okla. — After enduring the biggest upset loss of his head coaching career, Oregon’s Dan Lanning offered little in the way of excuses.

His preseason No. 2-ranked Ducks had national championship expectations. They still have those ambitions. But as they reckon with Saturday’s stunning 39-31 loss to Oklahoma State, they realize they have a long way to go.

“The score was closer than it really was, because it wasn’t close in a lot of ways,” Lanning said. “We got our ass kicked in a lot of areas.”

The Ducks have overcome early losses under Lanning in the past, but they have never been in this spot. Lanning had a 35-0 record against unranked opponents, and Oregon hadn’t lost to a foe outside of the AP Top 25 since 2021. The Ducks’ only defeats since the start of the 2024 season had come against eventual national champions Ohio State and Indiana.

And yet, Oregon fell on Saturday to a program that had lost 21 consecutive games against FBS opponents, including a 14-point defeat at Tulsa to open the season.

Oregon’s defense got lit up by touted Oklahoma State passer Drew Mestemaker and his fellow North Texas transfers to the tune of 554 total yards. The Ducks struggled to find an offensive rhythm, run the ball or protect star quarterback Dante Moore — and they were playing from behind most of the afternoon against a 24½-point underdog they had defeated 69-3 a year ago.

The Ducks had won 57 consecutive games when favored by 24-plus points, dating back to the FBS/FCS split in 1978, according to ESPN Research. Oklahoma State was an 11-1 underdog to beat the Ducks outright, and there weren’t many believers that the Cowboys could pull the upset. At BetMGM, 95% of the money wagered on the game’s straight-up winner was on Oregon.

The Cowboys’ upset added to the betting public’s tough start to Saturday. Oklahoma, which lost to underdog Michigan, was the most popular bet on the board at multiple sportsbooks. Oregon was the second-most popular bet.

Oregon pass rusher Teitum Tuioti, the lone Ducks player to speak to reporters after Saturday’s loss, said he and his teammates are well aware of the stakes going forward.

“We’ve got to clean that up really quick, and we’ve got to put it to bed really quick,” Tuioti said. “Going into the season, maybe we were too lackadaisical. Maybe we were reading our press clippings too much. We’ve really got to lock in now. There’s no room for error right now, and that’s what our defense, our team, got to do starting tomorrow.”

As Cowboys fans hauled a downed goalpost out of Boone Pickens Stadium to celebrate Oklahoma State’s second-largest upset since 1978, Lanning said the Ducks’ goals are still ahead of them and that they still control their destiny. But in a week in which Lanning expected improvement after a seven-point home win over Boise State, he didn’t see nearly enough.

Mestemaker burned Oregon’s experienced defense with 317 passing yards, 109 rushing yards and three total touchdowns in his home debut. He opened the game with a 75-yard dash, scrambled and leaped for a 10-yard touchdown early in the fourth quarter and got plenty of help from his playmakers from North Texas with 110 rushing yards from Caleb Hawkins and 121 receiving yards from Wyatt Young.

Lanning pointed to a dozen explosive plays allowed, too many missed tackles for the second week in a row and an inability to win at the line of scrimmage among the Ducks’ concerns. Tuioti said he still believes this Oregon team can play championship-caliber defense but acknowledged, “For sure, we’re not there right now.”

After Mestemaker put the Cowboys back in front 36-31 with 10:21 remaining in the contest, Oregon’s offense got three more opportunities to go ahead. The first drive went three-and-out. The second ended with Lanning going for it on fourth-and-8 from the Ducks’ 33-yard line; Moore rolled to his right, couldn’t find an open receiver and threw incomplete.

“I think you have to be aggressive in those moments, especially when you’re not having success, to keep it going,” Lanning said. “If it works, it works. If it doesn’t, then you create short fields.”

The Ducks’ offense retook the field with 3:11 remaining, down by eight, but fumbled away its last chance, with running back Dierre Hill Jr. losing the ball on a toss play.

“That’s a play that everyone will look at, and the reality is this ballgame is in no way, shape or form on Dierre,” Lanning said. “Ultimately, it was a myriad of plays. There were several plays that we didn’t play well enough to deserve to win this game.”

Offensively, Oregon couldn’t consistently run on Oklahoma State’s front and finished with 90 rushing yards on 30 attempts. Moore was sacked four times, and his offense registered four three-and-out drives that stifled any sense of momentum.

The Ducks’ offense got off to a messy start after nearby storms pushed back the game’s kickoff time by 90 minutes, but Lanning said he didn’t think the delayed start had an impact.

“They gave us a lot of looks that were a little bit different, especially defensively, than what we had prepared for, so we hadn’t prepared [our players] quite for what we were going to see,” Lanning said. “I thought their defensive coordinator, [Skyler] Cassity, did a great job of changing things up.”

The questions for this Oregon team going forward are macro and micro, from its scheme and playcalling under newly promoted coordinators Drew Mehringer and Chris Hampton to the variety of mistakes and miscues its players put on tape through two weeks.

But as Lanning addressed his team afterward, he thought back to his time at Alabama in 2015 and Georgia in 2021 and how those teams answered defeat.

“I’ve been a part of two national championships. In both those seasons, we had losses and the locker room felt similar to this,” Lanning said. “What’s it about? Getting up and getting better and going back to work. I just told our guys the same thing: We got to go back to work.

“You got to stop thinking about the end goal — which I don’t think these guys are — and you’ve got to think about right now, where we can improve and where we can get better.”

ESPN’s David Purdum contributed to this report.