Moments before Dillon Gabriel found Nic Anderson in the back corner of the end zone for the Sooners’ eventual game-winning touchdown against Texas, Walter Rouse fended off two defenders.
Next to Rouse at left guard was freshman Cayden Green, who missed his assignment during the play and ended up blocking no one. After celebrating the victory to the extent of giving himself a headache and dizziness, Green revisited the last play and his dissatisfaction with his performance.
“I gotta do better. I gotta help him out,” Green said. “That was a great block he had. We always talk about championship level strength, and that's literally what it is. But I gotta be better. I gotta help him out on that block so it doesn’t have to be close.”
Green, a true freshman who recently learned to play guard and became part of OU’s revolving door at left guard since redshirt sophomore Savion Byrd’s injury, held his own when he was thrown into the fire. Green entered late in the first half which featured Texas’ lone sack and OU averaging 3.3 yards per carry, a number which doubled in the second half after he entered. To many, it was an impressive performance from someone who transitioned from tackle to guard less than a month ago.
Yet, all he can think about is the play he didn’t make.
“It just wasn’t good enough,” Green said of his performance against Texas. “I just gotta keep improving, keep getting better.”
Even when he was dominating at Lee’s Summit North High School en route to becoming a consensus four-star prospect and ranked a top-five offensive tackle nationally by ESPN and Rivals, it still wasn’t enough to satisfy his high standard.
“It was almost like, ‘Yeah, I only drove the guy two yards, I got to take him five to 10 yards like I normally would,’” Green’s offensive line trainer Chris Gomez said. “He'd be mad about the fact that he didn't get a pancake, he just drove the guy.”
His desire to dominate stems in part from his preparation. Ahead of facing the Longhorns’ daunting defensive line that features size in the form of players like 6-foot-4, 362-pounder T’Vondre Sweat, Green was confident in his ability to stand his ground.
He thoroughly prepared to face NFL-caliber talent. When Cayden spoke to his dad, Reggie Green, prior to the Texas game, he exuded confidence when talking about his anticipated matchups due to the way he studied the Longhorns’ defensive front.
“He mentally prepares so much that he doesn't have any fear,” said Johlon Whittaker, Green’s uncle and Lee’s Summit North’s assistant offensive line coach during Green's junior and senior year. “He fears God and that's it. He doesn't fear any man. He prepares so well because he respects his opponent. So when he got out there, I knew he was gonna be okay because I know how he prepares.”
Cayden began studying film when he first started playing football in first grade. Reggie recorded each of his games, which he continued doing throughout Cayden’s high school career, and reviewed the tape with his son afterward.
What began as a way to watch himself dominate smaller competition turned into a form of fulfilling his desire for improvement. Whittaker, Gomez and Reggie each remember analyzing Cayden’s tape intently. They not only saw how harsh he was toward his play, but also how he applied his critiques on the field.
“What we do as offensive linemen, it's so technical and so meticulous that you have to be smart enough to understand and make three different reads based on an alignment, based on the down and distance, based on all these things,” Gomez said. “The expectation is for young offensive linemen to learn it and be able to regurgitate it when necessary, but it's not common for guys to actually do that or to take it upon themselves to get as highly advanced with it as Cayden was able to do.
“You put any objective in front of him, he knocked it out the park with no questions asked in a really highly efficient way.”
Green applies the same methodology at Oklahoma. It’s how he learned to play guard at the collegiate level less than a week before he was thrown into action there. It’s why he was recruited so highly out of high school, and it’s why he’s not satisfied despite a historic victory over Texas in the Red River Rivalry.
“After that game, we went back and watched it and realized we left some money on the table,” Cayden said. “Right now we're just humble and hungry. We want to do better for each other, and we want to do better for this team because we know we can do better.”
Redshirt freshman wide receiver Nic Anderson and freshman offensive lineman Cayden Green during the game against Iowa State on Sept. 30.
‘A married match’
Shortly after OU’s spring practices began, Reggie and Dana Green woke up one morning to an alarming text from their son.
Cayden had, in his mind, a poor showing at practice the day before. So poor it looked like he had never played football before. Within two hours of Cayden’s message, Reggie fielded a text from offensive line coach Bill Bedenbaugh telling him how proud OU’s coaching staff is of Cayden and how he’s “everything we thought he would be in a recruit.”
Bedenbaugh is known for his bluntness. He’s often seen giving his players an earful on the sidelines or during practice. Yet, his “hard-nosed” coaching style is not only matched, but often eclipsed by Cayden’s critiques of himself.
“He plays for a perfect coach. He’s really, really hard on the guy, but he’s not harder than Cayden is on himself,” Reggie said. “Cayden is the biggest critic of himself. … What you heard from Cayden (after the Texas game) was understanding, ‘I got to do better.’ He’s always been that way. I’m thankful he’s gone from high school where we had to coach him through it like, ‘hey, you’re so hard on yourself it’s affecting the plays,’ to now it’s actually making him better.
“He figured out how to flip the switch to where being hard on himself leads to him studying more and working harder. We’re proud of that.”
After Green assessed his missed block and, according to him, unsatisfactory performance against Texas, Bedenbaugh was next in line to tell the freshman he has to be better on the last play during the ensuing film session.
The desire for improvement has been a theme of both Green and Bedenbaugh in a season where OU’s typically prestigious offensive line has faltered at times.
“He just wants us to play like some animals,” Green said when asked what Bedenbaugh has emphasized to the unit during the season. “He wants us to play like Oklahoma is supposed to play. There's a standard, a level of expectation to play on the line here. It's nasty, physical, finish, technique. And that's how he wants us to play.”
When Green entered against Texas, the mindset Bedenbaugh instilled in his linemen was prevalent.
“I was just trying to hurt somebody to be honest,” Green said. “There’s a lot of tension there, and I was trying to hurt somebody and do my job.”
Physicality has always been second nature to Green. During a high school scrimmage, Lee’s Summit North coach Jamar Mozee felt so sorry watching him dominate a lesser opponent that he intervened, telling Green to tone down his aggression, an uncanny message to an offensive lineman.
“I had to literally fuss at him to get him to stop being too physical, and I don't even know what that means,” Mozee said. “He got mad at me for making him calm down and kind of changing the way he was playing in that scrimmage because I wanted the other team to scrimmage us again.
“I knew if he set the tone like that they were never gonna come back. Lo and behold, they never came back.”
Through their in-game mentality, preparation off the field and desire to uphold an increasingly high standard, Cayden and Bedenbaugh are seemingly a match made in heaven. Bedenbaugh was a driving factor in Cayden committing to Oklahoma, and the freshman knows the “hardcore” coaching style he presents will help him develop in the future with the Sooners.
“It’s kind of a married match there,” Mozee, who played for the Sooners from 1999-2001, said. “(With Bill), what you see is what you get, and it’s the same way with Cayden. And Cayden wanted to be coached by Bill. They're kind of the same personality to be honest with you, so Cayden’s very accepting of how he coaches.
“I ask him all the time if he’s hard (on him), he says, ‘Yeah coach, he’s really hard (on us).’ But Cayden’s not going to run from that. He understands it's going to make him better.”
