Auburn staff made 4-star DE Story 'a priority for the program'
AUBURN | There was no doubt that Caden Story wanted to stay close to home. The four-star defensive end just up I-85 in Lanett, Ala., was getting a lot of love from the new Auburn coaching staff, with his dad and coach, Clifford Story Jr., stating that he and Bryan Harsin text each other a lot.
Yet there was also a familiar face that was poking his head into the race for Story’s commitment at the end: Gus Malzahn.
“He’s got a SEC background,” the elder Story said of Malzahn. “He understands what it takes to be at the highest level. He won a national championship as an offensive coordinator and played for it as a head coach. So he knows how to win and knows what it takes to get his program to be a championship caliber.”
So Malzahn’s new team, the UCF Knights, played a huge role in Story’s decision. The Tigers, however, won out and, for the Lanett High School head coach, a major part was how the Auburn coaching staff treated his son.
“The coaches did a great job recruiting him, making him feel like he was a priority for the program. At the end of the day, when he went over there to Big Cat Weekend he had a chance to sit down and rub elbows with them again and just refresh some things and bring some things into the role he's going to play at Auburn University. So all of that played a role in it.”
Story, who has led the Panthers to two state championships in the past four years, also came away impressed with the plan Harsin has put in place to get Auburn back to the top of the college football mountain, using a piece of technology that everyone in the corporate world is all-too-familiar with.
“He [Harsin] literally, probably the first experience that I've had dealing with a head coach, that he got up and did a PowerPoint presentation of his plan for Auburn football,” Story said. “And it was very interesting. It was overwhelming and obviously he has a plan and a lot of people talk about their plan, but to see it on paper really meant a lot to us.”
That plan now includes the playmaking abilities of his son, Caden, who has been a force for the Panthers ever since going to the defensive ball in high school. Shocking, but the 6-foot-4, 265-pound Story is going into just his third season on defense as his father trained him to be a quarterback. That experience, plus a maturity his dad was sure to note, has come in handy.
“He's very mobile,” the coach said. “He's very fast, he’s athletic. He's learned how to use his hands, how to get out blocks. He’s learned how to track the quarterback. All of those things that I watched him mature from his 10th grade year, playing defense up to now, he has really made a lot of tremendous strides. He's gotten stronger and he's learning how to finish everything that he's doing. All of those attributes have really played a key role in his development.”
His father still mentions areas where he has to improve, though, and is looking for his star defender to become more violent in his senior season.
“I want Caden's mindset to be that he's going to dominate every single play, every single down in every game. I want people to say, we cannot literally run to the side No. 5 is on. That's the mentality that I want him to develop. I want him to destroy what he hits. Sometimes I feel that his mentality isn't to destroy yet.
“Of course I don't want anybody to get hurt, but I just want him to be having a nastiness about him. I just want people to know that five is on the field. You can't run to that side. And if you run to that side, you’re going to hate that you ran to that side.”
Between all of the nastiness and violence that Story can unleash on the field, there is still some good-natured ribbing that shows a classic example of a close father-son relationship.
“Caden’s really silly. What comes up, comes out. I just remember we were playing G.W. Long and he scooped up a fumble and ran in for a touchdown. And then I told him, ‘You can't move as fast as I thought you could move.’”
Of course, Caden wasn’t going to let his dad get the upper hand. What teenager would?
“He said, ‘At the end of the day, I got in the zone’ and I just couldn't do a damn thing and started laughing at him. But he’s a great kid. He's a special kid and I just look forward to big things for him.”
Story’s decision finally came on Sunday as he released a video announcing his commitment to Auburn while honoring his late close friend and teammate Quae Houston who passed away last August.
“At the end of the day, it was a lot of praying, a lot of fasting and he felt like Auburn was the best fit for him,” Story Jr. said. “I'm excited for him to have a chance to play SEC football.”