Magic Man: A.J. Green’s Career Marked by Hard Work, Competition

STILLWATER — A.J. Green endured what was probably the worst game of his collegiate career last season.

Against Baylor, he was penalized for pass interference, unsportsmanlike conduct, and two facemasks, but the last play of circumstance in Oklahoma State’s 35-31 loss against the Bears put a cap on his troubles.

Baylor rushed to the line with the clock ticking under 20 seconds. Charlie Brewer took the snap with 10 seconds to go before planting and lobbing up a ball in the corner of the end zone for Green and Baylor receiver Denzel Mims to fight over. The two had a hold of each other. As they left the ground, Mims turned his back toward Green, blocking him from the ball. Green tried to pop the ball free as the two crashed on his back. Mims held on, and the Bears scored their go-ahead points with seven seconds to go.

Ecstatic, the Bears ran to the edge of the end zone to celebrate the score.

After the final whistle blew, Green walked off the field arms locked with his position coach Tim Duffie and his high school teammate LD Brown by his side. Stunned by the final play and by a forgettable day, Green walked off the field in a daze.

“Just a rough day at the ballpark,” Duffie told PFB recollecting Green’s outing against the Bears. “Sometimes (Aaron) Judge goes to the ballpark and strikes out, 0-for-4. But you gotta be resilient and learn from the situation. Probably routine plays that he should’ve made to put us into situations where we could’ve won the game, but he didn’t lose it by himself. I’m sure he felt like if he could’ve made a couple more plays in those critical situations we could’ve escaped with a victory in Waco. There’s some truth to that, but it’s also some learning that you must go through, mentally. I was just letting him know that we were still with him.”

Two weeks later, Green found himself in a similar situation as he did at Baylor. At home against the dynamic duo of Will Grier and David Sills, West Virginia gained possession with 42 seconds in the fourth quarter trailing 45-41 and marched straight down the field. It was déjà vu.

With two seconds left on the clock, the Mountaineers reached the OSU 14-yard line and called a timeout. Green matched up on Sills, the Mountaineers’ premier pass catcher, on the south side of the field. Sills started a post route before Grier got flushed to his left, away from his go-to guy. Green tailed Sills from one side of the field to the other, as Grier flipped his hips and put up a ball for A.J. and Sills to fight over.

After essentially getting boxed out two weeks earlier by Mims, Green, like a veteran post player fighting for a rebound, won the battle. As Grier’s pass attempt soared into the end zone, Green waved his left hand in the air and batted down a would-be go-ahead score.

Boone Pickens Stadium erupted. Fourteen days after walking his former high school teammate off the field, LD Brown chased Green across the field to celebrate in his game-winning disruption.

A big point of emphasis for defenders, especially in the Big 12, is the ability to be able to forget about something quickly after it happened, to be able to move onto the next play. There is some truth to that, but Green also says he didn’t want that memory of walking out of Waco to leave him.

“That Baylor game, I didn’t forget it,” he says now. “I kept it in the back of my head, and I knew I had to respond. I knew I had to go out there and just give it my all. I know I can play with anybody in the country, anybody. I know I’m one of the top DBs in the country, and I had to force myself to think like that, and I had to make sure I think like that all the time.”

It’s something those close to Green said he has always been able to do: to assess a situation and find a solution.

“He’ll get it ingrained in his memory, and he won’t let it happen again,” Alvin Green, A.J.’s father said. “On the flip side of that, if he does get beat, he doesn’t worry about it. He doesn’t internalize it. I wish I had that gift.”

When Nisaa Muhammad, A.J.’s mother, watched the final snap of that West Virginia game, she already knew what the outcome would be.

“If something doesn’t go his way, he’ll review it, he’ll look at it, he’ll see how his feet could’ve been better, how his hands could’ve been better, how he could’ve defended it better,” his mother said. “I knew going into another opportunity to do almost the same thing, a pass into the end zone, there was no way. If he would’ve had to climb the goalpost and swoop down and knock the ball out, that would’ve happened.”

‘The Goof’

Talking to the people who know Green best, there is one word that always comes up with his personality.

“He’s still the goof, goofball, goofy,” Brown says of him.

“Goofy, just like me,” fellow corner Rodarius Williams adds.

“That’s what I was going to say, too,” his mother agrees.

His goofiness was on display during the team’s talent show at the end of fall camp. He and Amen Ogbongbemiga performed a magic show that ended in the pair getting booed off the stage. It wasn’t his first go in the magic business.

When he was young, his mother bought him a magic kit on a trip to Las Vegas, and every time Nisaa took him to the mall, Green wanted to stop at the booth to watch a magician do a trick. It was always something that interested him. His assistants used to be his two little sisters, but at the team talent show, it was a 225-pound linebacker.

“He really loves magic; he’s just not good at it,” Green’s mother said. “That’s another reason he’s goofy. … The part where you’re supposed to disguise the trick, I don’t know why, but he could never do that.

“I didn’t even have to see the talent show to know how much of a disaster it was gonna be. I think his talent was actually comedy because I’m sure everybody laughed the whole time. That’s the magic.”

Nisaa said her son doesn’t have issues getting a laugh out of those around him, but it isn’t always for the reason he thinks.

“He’ll make you laugh, but you’re really laughing at him, not really with him,” Nisaa said. “He has a really silly sense of humor. He has an infectious smile. He makes you want to laugh. Outside of football, he doesn’t take much too seriously. He’s just goofy. … We’re kind of goofy as a family. But he’s just not funny. That’s what’s so goofy about him: he thinks he’s funny, and it’s not funny. But he’s so serious about it that it’s funny.”

Family Ties

Competition has been a constant theme in A.J. Green’s life.

He grew up with a lot of cousins, with two of them also entering their senior seasons as Division I defensive backs.

Green, EJ Muhammad (a corner at Nevada) and Khairi Muhammad (a safety at North Texas) have combined for 97 games played, 307 total tackles, 10 interceptions, 31 pass breakups and five forced fumbles. All three finished their high school careers with DeSoto, and all three are from the same family. (They just keep coming, too. A.J.’s cousin, Jabbar Muhammad, committed to OSU in April).

“They always knew they wanted to go to college,” Nisaa said. “They always knew they were going to push themselves. Once the first offer came in, everybody was like, ‘OK, I’m going to get an offer because I’m better than him.’ They talked to each other like that. It really made them much more competitive than probably the average person because they always had that person on their heels, that person in their ear pushing them to get better.”

Green’s recruitment process didn’t quite take off as early as he might have planned, but his uncle, Bismillah Muhammad, said that all changed after the final game of his junior season.

It was a crazy game in the second round of the playoffs against perennial Texas high school power Allen. Green was tasked with staying with Notre Dame commit Jalen Guyton, and oh, Allen’s quarterback was this player named Kyler Murray.

Allen entered the game in AT&T Stadium unbeaten, and DeSoto was 10-1. The game came down to the final seconds, as Allen had to rush its field goal team on with time running out. A field goal as time expired gave Allen a 25-22 victory. A tough way to end a season, but Allen came in having averaged 52 points a game. The 25 Allen scored on DeSoto was the fewest Allen scored that season, as the Eagles went on to beat Cypress Ranch 47-16 in the state final.

The work Green put in against Guyton had colleges noticing.

Bismillah said Louisville was in on his nephew early, but once he had the options, Green had different ideas as to where he wanted to go.

Many think volunteering to defend in the Big 12 takes a special kind of crazy, but it’s what Green wanted. Rather than be in a conference with good but not great offenses, he wanted to go somewhere where he would be tested.

When his recruitment started to take off in his junior year of high school after the season ended, he told his mother he wanted to go to the Big 12 or the Pac-12 so he had the most opportunity to defend passes. He ended up choosing OSU over offers from Oklahoma, Texas Tech, Cal, Arizona State, Wisconsin, Missouri, Louisville and plenty of others.

“He always wanted to be the best,” Bismillah said. “From little league on up. If it was drills or something, he would pick the best one. Whoever somebody said was the best one, that’s who he always wanted to go with. High school, same way.

“He knew in order to be the best, he had to go against the best. That’s not something somebody had to tell him or teach him, that’s just something he automatically knew.”

Green and his cousins’ high school careers ended with another gut-punch against Allen.

Again in the second round of the state playoffs and at AT&T Stadium, Allen strolled into the game having won 54 straight. Allen’s closest game of the season to that point was a 10-point win, but Allen’s average margin of victory was 38 points. Murray and Guyton were gone, but Allen was still dominant.

Meanwhile, DeSoto had a shaky season up to that point — Green’s squad was 6-5 entering the contest, but that didn’t matter much in those four quarters.

Green had a pick-six in the game. He jumped an out route before juking Allen’s running back and quarterback out of their shoes and diving into the end zone at Jerry’s World.

Down 41-34, DeSoto scored in the fourth quarter, but the team’s kicker clutched his hamstring in the middle of the extra point attempt. He fell to the ground, and the kick missed. Allen escaped DeSoto’s grasps again, winning 41-40.

Allen would go on to lose to a Sam Ehlinger-led West Lake team in the semifinals, stopping the school’s unbeaten streak at 57 games.

It was the last time Green., EJ and Khairi played on the same team, but the years of pushing each other set them all up with Division I scholarships.

“It’s fortunate for them,” Bismillah said. “I always tell them iron sharpens iron. They’re always around each other, and they’re always competing against each other. It gives them that competitive edge just being around somebody that’s pushing you all the time.”

The Finale

Green remembers everything about his favorite play as a Cowboy to this point.

It was his game-winning interception against Iowa State in 2017. He remembers the ball was on the opposite hash. He remembers there were three receivers to his side. He remembers that it felt like the ball was in the air forever and the review of the play lasted even longer.

The interception was his fourth in three games. The streak started with him picking off Will Grier twice in Morgantown. The next week was Bedlam, where he picked off Baker Mayfield on the Sooners’ first series.

“West Virginia, he pretty much destroyed West Virginia,” Alvin said. “Those have been some of my favorite moments. Oklahoma, even though they lost, he really battled hard in that Oklahoma game with Baker Mayfield.”

Green is the only corner on OSU’s roster who hasn’t redshirted (apart from the freshmen). He played in nine games in his first fall on campus and has started all 26 of OSU’s games the past two seasons.

“A.J.’s a good football player,” Mike Gundy said. “He’s grown up now. It wasn’t a couple years ago we were talking about him just being out there and living in this league at the corner position, being young. He’s now the other guy.

“I told A.J. in April or May or whenever, I said, ‘You’re a really good football player. If you start to think you’re better than you really are, then you’ll just have an average year. It happens all the time. If you’ll really compete and stay hungry, then you’ll have a good year because you’re a talented player, and you’ve seen it all in this league.’ He seems to be doing very well. I think he understands that. It’s disappointing when young men start to believe what everybody tells them and then they don’t compete. Usually they just don’t play very well. I don’t see that with him right now.”

In his career he has 98 total tackles, five interceptions, 16 pass breakups and a pair of forced fumbles. As far as he has come from playing with his cousins, to the crazy Allen games, the Baylor heartbreak or the West Virginia triumphs, he still has plenty ahead of him.

Nine more pass breakups put him in the top 10 in program history. His 6-foot-1, 190-pound frame along with his skillset also give him a chance at playing beyond college. He has goals of winning a Big 12 Championship, being a first-team All-Big 12er and winning the Jim Thorpe, and none of that is out of the question.

It won’t happen by magic — it never does with Green — rather it will be because he put in the work, paid the price and now has a senior year in which he’s set to reap all the rewards.