Oct. 15—PULLMAN — Right away, coaches couldn't help but notice the confidence, the poise that Owen Eshelman walked around with. He asked a slew of questions. He was involved in everything. He wanted to know the why behind calls and plays and formations.
This was in the spring of 2024, back when Eshelman was a high school junior, years away from landing at Washington State. He was on a visit to South Dakota State, where coaches were still evaluating him, making the 10-hour trek up from Oklahoma without even a scholarship offer in hand. As the Jackrabbits ran through a practice, a lively session only a few months after they had secured a second straight national championship, Eshelman wasn't exactly standing off to the side.
Instead, Eshelman found his way to the Jackrabbits' huddles, trying to learn the plays and get to know the players. He didn't look overwhelmed the way many recruits on visits do, didn't look anxious, wasn't intimidated by the facility or coaches or tradition.
The impression that Eshelman made went more like this: Hey, I belong here. Even though I'm a 17-year-old on a visit, I'm gonna learn what these guys are doing at practice.
That was not lost on Danny Freund, then the Jackrabbits' offensive coordinator, who was one of the lead recruiters on the lively-armed quarterback from central Oklahoma.
"He's a guy in the locker room that everybody's gonna play for because of the type of kid he is. So that's one thing," said Freund, who worked as WSU's offensive coordinator last season, now with the same gig at North Dakota. "When I think about that position, you wanna have guys that the team is gonna play for, and you kinda have that it factor. Well, Esh has that moxie to him and that competitiveness and that personality, where I think guys will gravitate towards him."
Two years and some change later, that's one of the main reasons why Washington State is elevating Eshelman to the team's starting quarterback role, putting trust in a redshirt freshman to try and revive a moribund offense. When Saturday afternoon arrives and WSU visits Oregon State, the Cougars' quarterback won't be Caden Pinnick, who started each of the team's first six games. It will be Eshelman, who has just two snaps of college experience to his name.
Is Eshelman ready for such a task, to jump into the middle of the season and kickstart a rudderless WSU offense? We won't know until 3 p.m. Saturday, when WSU matches wits with OSU, which boasts one of the country's most electric offenses. Earlier this week, the Cougars (1-5, 0-2 Pac-12) decided to bench Pinnick, whose turnover problems were hampering his offense to the tune of just 12.6 points per game, opening the door for Eshelman and the live arm that made him such a captivating prospect out of Oklahoma.
Eshelman may not have much game experience, but a few things are clear about him. He's listed at 6-foot-3 and 204 pounds, giving him solid size for the position. He might have the best arm in the Cougars' quarterback room, which he showed off during the last two spring ball and fall camps, lasering the ball to all kinds of receivers. And while he's closer to a pocket-passer than his predecessor, he's plenty mobile too, quick to elude pressure and make plays on the run. He didn't collect more than 1,300 rushing yards as a high school senior by accident.
There's plenty more to Eshelman's story, though: He hails from Norman, Oklahoma, where South Dakota State extended him his only offer out of Norman North High. He was planning to enroll at SDSU, but when former coach Jimmy Rogers left for the same job at WSU, Eshelman followed him there. Then last winter, when Rogers decamped for the job at Iowa State, Eshelman stayed put in Pullman.
That's the short version of how Eshelman earned the opportunity to become the Cougars' starting quarterback. To understand the full version, you have to understand Eshelman and his makeup, the traits that put him in that position to begin with.
"Owen's one of the most competitive people I think I've ever been around, and he's a great human being," said Justin Jones, Eshelman's head coach at Norman North. "Even as a young guy at 15, you could see the the DNA there and what he was gonna bring to the table. Owen's not gonna flinch. He's very calm, cool and collected."
----The first time Eshelman played quarterback at the varsity level, he didn't have to jump into action cold. He just had to move positions. One Friday night in the fall of 2022, Norman North was locked in a 6A playoff battle with Owasso, a perennial powerhouse in the classification. The Timberwolves were hanging around.
Then, in the second quarter, disaster struck: Quarterback Kamden Sixkiller, who would go on to land at McNeese State before transferring to Campbell, went down with an injury. It was devastating news for the Timberwolves, who had lost their first-team all-state pick. Who would fill in?
"I looked over the sidelines and told him he's gotta go," Jones said of Eshelman. "So he trotted out there and did it."
At that point in the game, Eshelman was playing safety, where he had started each of the first 10 games of the season, playing with a physical approach. That helped him get identified by Chris Meyers, then the Jackrabbits' recruiting coordinator, now at USC. Earlier that year, Norman North pulled off an upset of another powerhouse, Jenks, thanks to Eshelman's game-sealing interception. "Esh was such a great athlete," said Rocky Moore, the Timberwolves' QB coach, "and just someone that you're like, man, it would be a miss on our part as a staff if he wasn't on the field in some capacity."
All the same, Eshelman switched mid-game from safety to quarterback. By the time the game wrapped up, Eshelman had filled in admirably considering the circumstances, throwing for 303 yards and three touchdowns, plus two interceptions. Norman North fell in a one-score loss, ending the Timberwolves' season, a disappointing ending to Eshelman's first action at QB. But the tone was set: Eshelman had looked good, so good that coaches would make him Norman North's full-time starter each of his final two seasons.
"We don't win the game, but he gave us a chance," Moore said, "and the kid didn't blink."
Which seems to beg the question: How? How does a teenager get thrown into the fire that way and perform so well? At the time, Eshelman was about 15 years old, still growing into the size that serves him so well now. What kind of 15-year-old can pull something like that off?
"The thing that keeps Esh ready is the way he prepares," Moore said. "Whether he's the starter or not, he's gonna prepare himself that way. That's just the way he was raised. That's the standard that he lives by, and that's not a cute piece for a story. That's the truth about him."
"His wiring has always been really helpful in that regard," added Ryan Eshelman, Owen's father. "I think even-keeled was a word that was used, not big swings in either direction, and so I think that confidence comes from preparation, and you just prepare and you prepare and you prepare, and that's what enables you to step out and do your job in that regard."
At every stop in his career, Eshelman's preparation has struck everyone he's been around, from his parents to his coaches, at Norman North and South Dakota State and WSU. Earlier this week, Cougar coach Kirby Moore noted that Eshelman's preparation had always impressed him, that Eshelman's work behind the scenes had helped him earn this opportunity. "He's prepared like he's the starter," Moore said. Last year, Freund noticed the same, gushing about the results that could come "when you combine that work ethic with the talent that he has," Freund said.
That year, Eshelman was a true freshman at WSU, not particularly close to seeing the field. He was one of five scholarship QBs on the team. He wasn't traveling to road games, which is typical of signal-callers in his position. Eshelman's talent was clear to anyone who had seen him play, but because of the natural progression of young quarterbacks at the college level, it wasn't clear when he would get his shot.
Even in those days, Eshelman prepared like the day would come tomorrow. Coaches were surprised by his note-taking, the way he wrote everything down, in team meetings and position meetings and individual meetings. He steeped himself in details. He wanted an explanation behind everything, coaches said, but he wasn't questioning authority. He just wanted to know the reason behind the names of playcalls, behind decisions of all kinds, so he could be prepared as possible.
In those days, Eshelman was still raw, far more of an enticing prospect than a finished product. But the talent oozed out of him like sap off a maple tree. During fall camp last year, Freund remembers, former WSU quarterback Zevi Eckhaus took notice. "He would always say, 'Esh is gonna be really good, bro. Like he's gonna be really good.' He just kinda knew," Freund said. "That's why I think everybody's really excited about his potential."
Rep by rep, Eshelman began to see the results. During this year's spring practices and fall camp, Eshelman was squarely in the mix for the starting role, rotating in consistently for reps with the Cougars' first-teamers. At one spring practice in Spokane, Eshelman unloaded a perfect fade pass to wideout Noah Westbrook, who hauled it in over his shoulder in the corner of the end zone. During one fall camp practice in August, he recorded one of his best throws as a Cougar, lofting a perfect deep pass to receiver Tony Freeman for a touchdown at Rogers Practice Field.
Eshelman wasn't perfect, not by any stretch of the imagination. He missed throws and took avoidable sacks. Prepared as he was, he's still a second-year freshman, and he made mistakes accordingly. In one fall camp scrimmage, he came inches away from throwing an interception. In Eshelman's play, there was plenty of evidence that he was still learning the ropes of playing FBS football.
Still, two things were becoming clear. One: Eshelman had an enticing skillset, a booming arm and credible athleticism with his legs. Two: He was flourishing as a compelling leader, his teammates rallying around him with ease. His preparation was bleeding into his leadership, into his ability to keep his teammates pointed in the right direction, even as a redshirt freshman.
"Owen really took a good leadership role. He's really vocal," offensive lineman Ashton Tripp said after one fall camp practice. "So I'd say that's a good positive."
"Owen has a very steady demeanor. He doesn't get too high, doesn't get too low," Moore said after a spring practice. "We always talk about emotional consistency. There's a lot of highs and lows in athletics play-to-play, and I think that's the demeanor that you have to have."
"It's real. It's not fake with him," Freund added. "It's very, very genuine. As you guys start talking to him more, you'll feel where there's a natural leadership and instinct that he has. That was the biggest thing that we noticed in recruiting."
Recruiting is what brought Eshelman from Norman to Pullman. But earlier this year, he was recruited once again, this time by a familiar face.
----Last December, when Rogers decided to leave WSU for the same job at Iowa State, he upended just about everything with the Cougars' program. He left them without a head coach, without two coordinators, without several star players who played key roles on that team: Defenders Isaac Terrell and Bryson Lamb, Max Baloun and Sullivan Schlimgen.
As Rogers made the transition to Iowa State, he had to overhaul a roster, hitting the transfer portal to find players to plug holes. Former ISU signal-caller Rocco Becht had already followed coach Matt Campbell to Penn State, so Rogers needed a quarterback.
He reached out to Eshelman, according to multiple sources with knowledge of the situation, asking if he'd be interested in coming with him to Iowa State. Eshelman politely declined the opportunity, sources said.
"It stayed true to the kind of person he is," Rocky Moore said.
The timeline of events, according to those in position to know, helped Eshelman decide to stay at WSU. Not long after taking the job at Iowa State, Rogers and his new staff began the process of filling out their roster, which means they made some of their moves within the first week or so.
Eshelman didn't hear from ISU coaches until a bit later in that process, according to those sources. Plus, he was beginning to like what was going on in Pullman, where Moore had recently taken over and began filling out his staff and roster, doing so with an offensive-minded approach.
Iowa State got a commitment from its quarterback, Jaylen Raynor, on Jan. 3. Eshelman re-signed with WSU on the same day.
"Bigger and shinier wasn't necessarily a selling point, you know?" Ryan said. "You see it all the time where somebody leaves to go somewhere else and it's just not as good as what they left behind. So I think he just weighed it all and just felt like, 'this feels like home, and I see a great future for me here.'"
----There's no use in sugarcoating it: There's a bit of pressure on Eshelman this weekend. Washington State is known for producing prestigious quarterbacks, from Jack Thompson and Mark Rypien to Ryan Leaf to Drew Bledsoe, from Luke Falk and Gardner Minshew to Cam Ward and John Mateer. Who knows what the future holds, but in earning the Cougars' QB1 designation, Eshelman takes the torch from those who laid the foundation.
Beyond all that, though, there's the immediate. The Cougars could use a win this weekend to help turn their season around, to build some semblance of confidence in their fanbase, which has grown irritated with the way their team's offense has floundered. Can Eshelman do his part to reverse that trend?
That's a tale yet to be spun, but this won't be the first time Eshelman has found himself in this kind of spot. Remember his first time starting at the high school level, when Norman North's quarterback sustained an injury and prompted Eshelman to take his place? Four years later, he isn't exactly taking over because of injury, but he is being asked to jump into action in a pinch.
To pull an upset on Oregon State, which opened as a 17.5-point favorite, Eshelman and the Cougars' offense might have to score some points. The Beavers' offense is one of the best in the country, spearheaded by quarterback Braden Atkinson and receiver Jesse Legree, and WSU will have to keep pace with that production.
To those who know him best, that's where Eshelman's preparation comes in handy. Before this opportunity came along, he wasn't going through the motions with each passing game, knowing he wasn't going to see the field. He was practicing like he would start the next game. Now he actually will.
It registers as a remarkable trait for a 20-year-old, a young man still learning how to navigate the world, much less an FBS football program. Is it a natural trait he has? Or a characteristic he learned from his parents?
"I think that may come the most natural for him," said Libby Eshelman, Owen's mother. "One of the things that we have worked to instill in our kids is where their identity comes from, and I think Owen has grabbed a hold of that. He loves football, and he does love to win. He loves the experience. But he knows at the end of the day, that does not define him, and I think that allows him to play more freely."
"People are not always kind to quarterbacks, and so as a mom, I'm excited for him," Libby added. "But I have some butterflies for him too."
Nobody would fault Eshelman for having some, too. He'll be prepared, though, the same way he was in previous games this fall. He wasn't leading the huddle in those settings. He wasn't leading that huddle at South Dakota State on his visit years ago, either, but he prepared like he was. Maybe his secret recipe was obvious all along.