‘We are O-line U’

As Ravens prepare to face Bills, Oklahoma offensive linemen take center stage

The film didn’t lie, but Bill Bedenbaugh could bend it to certain truths.

That’s what Orlando Brown Jr. remembers from the weekly film-study sessions with the Oklahoma offensive line coach who has helped turn Norman into a factory for NFL-bound big boys. Brown might have played the game of his life, but Bedenbaugh would cue up the imperfections.

“He would skip our pancakes, all our dirty [stuff ],” the Ravens right tackle recalled Thursday, chuckling.

Really — all of it?

“I do that quite a bit,” Bedenbaugh confessed while laughing over the phone Friday. “But to me, you’re never going to play perfect. You want to get as close to it as you possibly can.”

In recent years, few college lines have come so close, or dominated so thoroughly. If there is a weekend that validates Oklahoma’s claim as “Offensive Line U.,” this might be it.

On Saturday, the No. 6 Sooners, led in part by two All-Big 12 offensive linemen, will take on No. 7 Baylor in the conference title game. On Sunday, three Oklahoma linemen who started together only two years ago will reunite at New Era Field, where the Ravens and Buffalo Bills will face off in a battle of smash-mouth offenses.

On a 2017 Sooners team headlined by quarterback Baker Mayfield, they were the backbone of an offense that led the nation in yards per game and finished third in scoring. The Ravens’ Brown has developed into one of the NFL’s top right tackles in only his second year. Teammate Ben Powers was a fourth-round draft pick in April, one of four Sooners taken in the draft. Cody Ford, another rookie and top-40 pick, will start at right tackle for Buffalo.

“When they step on the field, those guys had a pact to make sure that everybody they were playing against was on their faces, and they would stay on them until the play was over,” said Ravens tight end Mark Andrews, another former Oklahoma star. “Those guys are a bunch of animals, and they play like animals.”

It must be something in the water. Find any list of the league’s top linemen, and chances are that at least a few wore the crimson and cream.

Philadelphia Eagles tackle Lane Johnson recently became the NFL’s highest-paid offensive lineman. Erstwhile Washington Redskins tackle Trent Williams is a seventime Pro Bowl selection. Carolina Panthers tackle Daryl Williams was named secondteam All-Pro in 2017. Ten Sooners linemen overall have been drafted since 2010, enough to fashion a two-deep at the line of scrimmage.

In Baltimore, that leads to debates between Brown and Iowa product Marshal Yanda about the line legacies of their respective alma maters. In Buffalo, it’s more definitive.

“We are O-line U,” Ford said. “We take great pride in that because it’s a fact. I don’t really know who else would be considered O-line U. Ain’t nobody else doing it like us.”

Even as Oklahoma has churned out star quarterback after star quarterback, the depth at Bedenbaugh’s disposal might be even more enviable. In 2016, after earning Freshman All-America honors at left tackle, Brown returned for his redshirt sophomore season. Ford, whom he’d taken under his wing, had won the job at left guard as a redshirt freshman.

But in the Sooners’ third game of the season, Ford broke his left fibula against Ohio State. His replacement was a juniorcollege transfer, Powers. All he did next to Brown, the eventual Big 12 Offensive Lineman of the Year, was earn All-Big 12 honors after surrendering one sack in nearly 600 snaps.

Returning to health in 2017, Ford started four games and appeared in 12 overall. Last year, he garnered All-America honors, as did Powers. When Oklahoma became the first Big 12 team to win the Joe Moore Award, given to college football’s top offensive line, one voter called its play “beautiful.”

“We knew we were good, [but] we didn’t know exactly how good we were,” Powers said. “Being the best at anything you do is an awesome feeling. So for someone to say you’re the best offensive line in the country, that’s something we took pride in.”

When Bedenbaugh took over in 2013, he wanted an offensive line room with “guys that are really, really dedicated, passionate about playing the position.” He demanded accountability up and down the Sooners’ depth chart, on the field and off it.

Oklahoma is a blue blood, but it has built its lines in much the way the 2019 Ravens have: by mixing can’t-miss prospects with overlooked grinders — anyone who can do their job better than the defender across from him.

As Bedenbaugh drilled the nuances of footwork and aiming points, the line’s veterans reinforced a culture that Brown said would shoot for 50 pancake blocks a game and would call out teammates’ poor play in film study. It was a fraternity, he said, that “held each other accountable.”

Powers said that by the end of his first month of practice “we were all buddybuddies,” hanging out, texting. Brown still remembers his first conversation with Ford.

He said he liked Brown’s haircut, a compliment that led Ford to the barber he still uses. Brown joked that he probably doesn’t have many Instagram posts on which Ford hasn’t commented. (“It’s too early for sweat pants bruh,” Ford wrote in one comment on a September post. He followed up: “But imma [sic] like the pic.”)

In Norman, food has become a biweekly bonding agent. In 2017, Brown’s final season there, the offensive line started to head out to local restaurants once every week for meals. Last year, Oklahoma doubled down: On Wednesday the starting line would eat with Kyler Murray, the team’s starting quarterback and eventual No. 1 pick, and on Thursdays the whole group would meet up somewhere for a caloric carnival.

“We needed those dinners,” Ford said. “We would get in there, eat and — I don’t want to say everything, but we would just talk about stuff outside of football. We’ll get in there and we’ll hang out and enjoy a good meal and enjoy each other’s company.”

Even now, the linemen talk about the current Sooners as if they’ve shared this season with them. Powers, for instance, knew at Oklahoma that Marquis Hayes was his heir apparent at left guard. Following him from afar, seeing his success this season — Hayes has started 11 games as a redshirt sophomore — Powers said that “I almost get a little satisfaction.” He stopped to correct himself. “I for sure get satisfaction from that.”

Brown smiled as Adrian Ealy’s name was mentioned. The redshirt sophomore tackle was a four-star prospect coming out of high school who studied under Brown his first year and Ford his second — “my best friends,” Ealy said. In August, he acknowledged that “sometimes you’ve got to sit back to get right.” He had to learn what it meant to be an Oklahoma lineman.

On Wednesday, Ealy was named secondteam All-Big 12.

“You get recruited by a school like Oklahoma and you get these people telling you this, that and the other, and then you get there and they’re not going to play anybody just because of recruit status and anything like that,” Ford said. “They’re going to make you earn your stripes, earn your play. And I think that’s the biggest thing about the culture over there: that everything you get is earned, no matter who you are or where you came from.”

On Saturday, after the Sooners go for their third straight conference championship, Ford and Brown will meet up in Buffalo. Ford has taken shots at Brown’s fashion sense, and Brown joked that he’d “check his closet when I see him. I’m sure he’s got a bunch of [stuff ] in there anyway.”

What they mostly want to do, though, is what they do best. Before they stand on opposite sidelines Sunday afternoon in a matchup of two of the AFC’s top teams, they’ll go out for dinner Saturday night.

“Just like old times,” Ford joked.