Oliver takes unconventional path Houston All-American defensive lineman brushes off distractions, chases title
A.J. Blum had never seen anything like it. In the 14 years of coaching football at the high school level in Texas where he built a reputation for developing Division I prospects, Blum had never seen a recruit without a cell phone.
That is, until he met Ed Oliver.
While most college football recruits are typically glued to their phones, Oliver elected to avoid the noise that surrounds the recruiting process altogether.
“During the recruiting process, he didn’t want to talk to people,” Blum recalled recently. “He knew the people he wanted to talk to and they knew how to get a hold of him.”
A five-star defensive tackle out of Westfield High, Oliver was heavily recruited by blue-blood programs such as Alabama, Oklahoma, Texas and Texas A&M, but once again he would buck conventional wisdom, deciding to play closer to home at the University of Houston.
“He’s really close to his family,” Blum said. “He loves to be around his mom and it’s only about a 20-to-25-minute drive.”
One quickly learns that Oliver marches to the beat of his own drum.
“I just do things differently,” Oliver told the Orlando Sentinel recently.
There’s no better example of this trend than when the All-American defensive tackle announced in early March that this upcoming season would be his last with the Cougars. Before the start of his junior season, he said he would skip his final year of eligibility to enter the 2019 NFL draft.
It was an early statement that surprised many except for the man who made it.
“I don’t want to be asked about it every three seconds, I want to focus on me and I want to focus on my guys and I want to focus on winning a championship this year,” Oliver explained. “So that question is out of the picture for the whole year because I already told you all what was going on.”
Oliver said since his declaration, he feels a weight has been lifted off his shoulders.
“I haven’t been asked that question since,” he said. “I feel like there ain’t no way of me talking about myself that can help us be better.”
One person who wasn’t shocked by the move was Blum, who has known Oliver since he was in junior high. He coached both Ed and his older brother, Marcus, before being hired to coach the defensive line for the Cougars in 2016.
“I think it will definitely diminish a lot of the questions that are irrelevant to the team and put more relevance and validity back on what’s important now,” Blum said.
Blum recalls first meeting Oliver when he was a middle-schooler participating in summer football camps in the Houston area.
“He was no different than the other big kids in junior high,” Blum said.
Marcus was already playing football for Blum at the high school level.
“He took to coaching pretty quickly and you could see it then when he was younger,” he said of Ed Oliver.
Blum said it was Oliver’s desire to be the best that stuck with him.
“I had a really rich pedigree of defensive linemen, guys that went on to play Division I football, and everyone that had come in always wanted to be the next guy. They wanted to be the guy that was the next D-I star,” Blum said. “Ed told me as a freshman that he didn’t want to be the next one — he wanted to be the one that everyone remembered. The one that was better than all of them.
“That gave me an idea of what he was wanting as a goal.”
After playing on the freshman team in high school, Oliver moved up to varsity, where he would quickly earn a reputation as a hard worker.
He finished the season with 62 tackles, including 14 for a loss.
“There were some days where as a young football player, I wouldn’t necessarily say that he ever got his lunch ate, but there were some times were he definitely met a match in regard to a challenge,” Blum said.
But those instances would only fuel Oliver, who was the type of competitor who wanted one more rep in practice or one more replay in the film room.
It was his relationship with his brother that Blum believes helped mold Oliver on the field.
“He was never around guys his age. He was always with Marcus, who’s a couple years older than him, and he was always with Marcus’ friends. That’s who Ed competed against.
“He competed against guys that were two and three years older, if they were playing basketball or playing sports, anything, that’s the kind of level he held himself to,” Blum said.
Marcus Oliver would go on to play offensive guard at Houston and Ed Oliver would follow his brother a few years later.
Ed Oliver earned American Athletic Conference Rookie of the Year honors in 2016 after starting all 13 games for the Cougars.
He led the conference with 23 tackles for a loss on a team that finished 9-4 and was ranked as high as No. 6 in the Associated Press Top 25 poll.
The following season, he recorded 73 tackles, including a team-high 16.5 tackles for loss, despite being limited in two games by a knee injury.
Oliver earned AAC Defensive Player of the Year honors and the Outland Trophy, which is presented annually to the nation’s top interior lineman.
Oliver’s focus since his NFL decision has been on helping lead the Cougars win a championship.
“I know my plans and now that it’s out there, it’s time to put in the work,” Oliver said. “I want to be better this year than I was last year, than my freshman year. Things like that keep me motivated.”