Pettigrew dove for the pylon, and the result was the decisive touchdown in the Cowboys’ 49-45 win over Texas Tech on Saturday.
“That was my Superman,” Pettigrew said.
It took that kind of effort to beat Tech quarterback Graham Harrell, who had the fourth-best passing day in major college football history with 646 yards.
Pettigrew caught a short pass from Zac Robinson and rumbled down the right sideline for the score with 1:37 remaining.
“That was a pretty incredible play for a tight end, for a guy that’s 6-6, 260 to do what he did with the ball after the catch,” Cowboys offensive coordinator Larry Fedora said. “He made some people miss and then he took it to the house.”
The Cowboys (2-2) bounced back from a lopsided loss at Troy to win their Big 12 Conference opener for only the second time in nine years.
Tech (3-1, 0-1 Big 12) had a final chance to win, but freshman sensation Michael Crabtree, the nation’s leader in receptions and touchdown catches, let a 15-yard pass from Harrell bounce off his hands in the end zone after cornerback Ricky Price flashed in front of Crabtree with 11 seconds remaining.
“I thought we scored. I thought it was a touchdown,” Harrell said. “He (Price) made a good play. If he hadn’t, we win the game.”
Price said he “barely got enough on it just to make a difference.”
“For him to drop that, I was ecstatic,” Price said.
Whereas Tech went to the air with the nation’s second-ranked passing offense, OSU did much of its damage on the ground with three rushers surpassing 100 yards for the first time in school history.
Robinson ran for two scores and threw for one, and Dantrell Savage and Kendall Hunter each had a TD run.
Harrell completed 46 of 67 passes with five touchdowns, and he also guided Tech into position for Alex Trlica’s 20-yard field goal that gave the Red Raiders a 45-42 edge with 4:49 to play. But after Tech stopped the Cowboys once, the Red Raiders couldn’t run the final 2:44 off the clock - throwing incompletions out of their spread set - and Oklahoma State scored on its first play from scrimmage after getting the ball back with 1:49 left.
“It was pitiful. It was pitiful,” Tech coach Mike Leach said. “It was flat-out pitiful. We’re some vaunted offense so we’re going to sit here with our arms folded. Oh well, we’ll have three lackadaisical plays and then we’ll punt and we’ll make it the defense’s problem.
“Well, that’s incredibly soft and incredibly front-runnerish. There ain’t nothing tough about that.”
Tech’s Danny Amendola caught 14 passes for a career-high 233 yards and a score, and Crabtree caught three touchdown passes, but even Tech’s 718 yards total offense - the most ever allowed by the Cowboys - wasn’t enough for a win.
“Unbelievable,” Robinson said. “Going from the highest high to the lowest low back to the highest high. It was a lot of ups and downs.”
Savage ran for 130 yards on 25 carries, Robinson picked up 116 on 13 rushes and Hunter ran 14 times for 113. The Cowboys ended up with 366 yards on the ground.
Crabtree (14 catches, 237 yards) caught three short TD passes in the first half and also had a 75-yard grab down the right sideline to set up Shannon Woods’ 6-yard scoring run. But the two couldn’t hook up on the one throw when it mattered most.
“If I put it on the other shoulder, he’s going to catch that easily and win,” Harrell said. “If I put it a foot on the other side of him, we catch the ball and win. It’s probably my fault. He played a heck of a game."
