Auburn’s 6-foot-5, 253-pound defensive lineman, who's been smiling for nearly every minute of Tuesday's half-hour media breakout session, tightens his back and scrunches his shoulders, stretching back in his chair as if moving away from a foul odor. His mouth puckers as if sipping Toomer’s lemonade. Someone has just asked Big Kat Bryant about his real name.
“When someone says Markaviest, I kind of cringe,” he said.
While head coach Gus Malzahn and defensive line coach Rodney Garner were courting Bryant during the 2017 recruiting cycle, he officially went by Markaviest — his birth name.
But since that year’s National Signing Day, he’s been Big Kat. Well, at first it was Big Cat on Auburn’s website, but Bryant said he wanted to have some remnants left from Markaviest in his new moniker — specifically, the letter K. Thus, Big Kat was born.
It was new-fangled and amusing to Auburn fans, but to Bryant and his circle, nothing had changed. He hasn’t gone by Markaviest since he was a kid.
Bryant said his mother was the first to call him Cat as a simple nickname, followed by his grandmother. He can’t remember the last time he went by Markaviest — other than when teachers read his name off a class roster. Bryant politely but quickly requests Big Kat. He’d be fine if Markaviest stayed retired forever.
"I ain't gonna say it's never going to come back, but … If my mom isn't even going to call me that, then no,” Bryant said.
As a rising defensive prospect in Crisp County, Georgia, coaches and teammates referred to Bryant as his friends and family did — Cat. That was, until Bryant’s junior year of high school.
In the middle of a practice on the field in Cordele, Georgia, Shelton Felton saw something he didn’t like.
Bryant couldn’t recall what exactly Felton, the former head coach at Crisp County and current linebackers coach at Akron, was upset about. The coach yelled across the field to Bryant: “Big Cat, bring your a-- here!”
Bryant glanced around to locate who Felton was talking to.
“At the time, I wasn’t the biggest person on the team because I was a junior,” Bryant said. “And I was like, ‘He’s not talking to me.’”
Felton watched as his stud D-lineman continued to look perplexed. The coach confirmed: “No, I’m looking at your a--!”
“Oh, I’m Big Cat,” Bryant recalls realizing.
Bryant said it’s the only time getting in trouble with a coach has paid off.
From that day forward, “Big” was to be properly placed in front of “Cat” when addressing Bryant. And the nickname fit — as a man among boys when he was a senior defensive end, Bryant received over 100 offers, including college football’s elite programs, while producing over 100 tackles, 36.5 tackles for loss and 15.5 sacks his senior season.
He spurned his classmates’ suggestion of Georgia and his mother’s of LSU to select Auburn, where he cited its small-town feel, a relationship with Garner and the smarts of Kevin Steele as key persuaders. It didn’t hurt that Montravius Adams, a former Auburn standout on the defensive line from 2013-16, is Bryant’s cousin.
But Adams was off to the NFL before Bryant first stepped foot in Jordan-Hare. This coming season, however, Bryant will enjoy the luxury of working alongside a trio of would-be draft picks along Garner’s defensive line.
2018 starters Derrick Brown, Marlon Davidson and Nick Coe all received favorable draft grades after the conclusion of last season. Led by Brown, who projected as a consensus first-round prospect in the winter, all three returned to lead what they hope can be one of the nation’s most disruptive and explosive groups.
Bryant said that returning experience is invaluable to both he and the rest of the defensive line, adding that Brown, Davidson and Coe all know the “ins and outs” of what it takes to be successful at the position.
"If I have any questions, I go to Marlon and Derrick, and they tell me anything I want to know,” he said.
The return of a trio of unquestioned all-conference-caliber talents would put most blue-chip players in a bind in terms of career trajectory and playing time. Not Bryant.
In Steele’s defense, labeling players as starters or backups isn’t exactly beneficial — the coordinator’s packages cater to the defense’s needs on that drive or play, and if it includes a second-teamer over a projected lottery pick, so be it.
Bryant has adopted a mindset that runs parallel to his coordinator’s scheme.
“I don't look at myself as a backup with as much as I play,” Bryant said. “I play so much. I play every game. Some games I don't start, but I play just as much as those guys do.”
His true freshman season, Bryant was utilized solely at buck linebacker as a pure speed-rushing threat. Last year, he was shifted over to defensive end, where he rotated behind both Davidson and Coe.
"I do both,” Bryant said of which position Auburn wants him playing in 2019. “I don't know. My mom told me the other day, 'Umm, looking at this, it lists you as a defensive end.' And I was like, 'Well, I do both.'"
Bryant quietly earned SEC All-Freshman honors alongside Coe his first season. He then improved in tackles, tackles for loss and sacks last year. He even tallied his first career touchdown in the 63-14 Music City Bowl bashing of Purdue — a 20-yard pick-6 off a David Blough pass batted down by teammate Tyrone Truesdell.
Through a week-and-a-half of spring practice, Bryant said the game has slowed down mightily from when he arrived as a wide-eyed, freakishly athletic true freshman.
Bryant still remembers all the hype he received coming out of high school, though. He knows that’s what the college football world most knows him as — a monster prospect that hasn’t been heard of much outside The Plains since committing.
This is the year Bryant wants to see that all change.
“I don't like to lose,” Bryant said. “Reps, individually, anything — I don't like to lose. I just really want to take that step… I work off the field. I work so hard. That's the goal for me. The Big Kat, the one you see in high school, that's the one I see.”
And even in a crowded pond teeming with surefire NFL talent, this Big Kat wants to be a shark.
“In high school, I was that big recruited guy. I want to be the big fish,” he said. “Because I know the game so much better than I did my first two years, I'm ready to take that next step ahead.
“I want to be the next Derrick Brown.”
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