Cason Henry hopes South Carolina can build off 2024's momentum

South Carolina offensive lineman Cason Henry sat down for a 1-on-1 interview on The Gamecock Club Hour on 107.5 The Game last week when he went over a number of topics about his experience so far with the Gamecocks.

Below is a transcript of most of that interview with the answers only slightly edited for brevity and clarity.

On Daily Routine…

So, we start pretty early as an offensive line and defensive line. We lift together—it’s us and the linebackers—so we’re the mids and bigs first, meaning linebackers, offensive linemen, and defensive linemen. I wake up at about 6:15 or 6:30 every morning. It’s not a terrible wake-up as long as you go to bed on time.

First thing, I eat breakfast with Yimy (Rodriguez) and our nutrition staff, who are awesome. Nutrition is the most important part, really—if you’re lifting all these weights but not eating right, nothing good will happen. After breakfast, we rollin into weights. We do about 40–45 minutes of what Coach Day doesn’t like to call it a warm-up, but that’s what it is—warming up, speed work, and drills. Then, we hit the weight room for about an hour and a half.

After lifting, we have meetings as an offensive line with our GAs, since the coaches are out recruiting right now. We go over fundamentals, and soon we’ll start Football Fridays, where we do drill work on the field with the GAs to build chemistry and get to mesh a little bit better with the new guys this Friday and Fridays moving forward.

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On New Additions to the Team…

I always commend Lonnie—he brings in great guys and is very selective. The guys that he brought in this year are great, just like the guys he brought in last year. Nick, Boaz, RJ are great. They’re great men who handle themselves correctly in the weight room, off the field and on the field. I have no bones to pick with any of them. They’ve impressed me with how they’ve conducted themselves. I think they’ll be a big help with our offensive line in taking the next step from last year.

It’s never great to see a good team take a step back next season, nobody wants to see that. You’ve got to find guys who will help uphold the standard. The standard in our room is being upheld by those guys right now. We haven’t had a football practice yet obviously, so I don’t know how these guys play, I’ve watched a little bit of tape but that’s about it but they are great guys , they seem like great football players to me. So I don’t think there will be any lull in talent or playstyle from any of us because I don’t think Lonnie would allow that.

On Building on Last Season’s Momentum…

I think building off the momentum of last year, we didn’t finish how we wanted but I think we played well as an offensive line in that game, though we always obviously can play better. We we know we are near where we want to be and it’s actually attainable. It’s not something you look at on a Powerpoint presentation and “We want to be this We want to be tough. We want to be resilient.” We rolled out there and we actually did it this year for a lot of the games. And I think that showed a lot of the guys in the room that we can actually be what we wanted to be and be what we say we are.

We want to be the most physical, the toughest, offensive line in the nation and I think that’s attainable because we’ve glimpsed what we can be and we’re in a position to take that next step to be who we say were are next year.

I think that keeping the momentum from this year is probably the most important thing, and if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, right? So, I hope that we stay in here during May. I’d be glad to be here with my guys training. No other place I’d rather be. I have nothing to do at home anyway. You know what I mean? Like, I can go see my friends and I can go see my friends and my family for a little bit, but I’d rather be here, uh, improving my craft because it’s my job and it’s my job to, you know, do well for your fans, obviously, for our fans and do well for myself, do well for my teammates, do well for Lonnie, my family, etc.

And that’s the same for all the other guys, is that they’re trying to make a living in the sport, and they’re trying to get to the next level. Well, this is how you do it. You know what I mean? We’ve demonstrated that the extra work that we do in the preseason allows us to win more games in the season.

I think that if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. We need to keep the same mindset as we did last year and keep building on what this and the legacy that the seniors left this year.

On Playing Under Lonnie Teasley…

I think he understands what we go through every day because he was an offensive lineman his entire life and then he went into coaching offensive line. And I think that that provides an interesting perspective for him to kind of put himself in our shoes when it comes to, you know, what we do every day, stuff like that where other coaches cannot because they played other positions or whatever. They’re not— offensive line isn’t their main focus, but it’s always been, you know, Teasley’s main thing is offensive line, and he’s a down-to-earth guy. I mean, work respects work. He’s a very respectful guy, very down to earth, great guy, loving family man, all the things you want in a coach he has them, and I absolutely love playing for him, and I would not want to play for anybody else in the country than Lonnie.

And I think all of his players feel the same way. That’s why he is so successful at recruiting every year. That’s why he retains a lot of his good players that stay and guys want to come back and play for him. Guys don’t want to declare early, another season for Lonnie, play with the guys like because he creates a culture of love. Like, the offensive line actually hangs out. Like, I know that’s not a— that’s not something that happens at other schools a lot is that we all hang out together all the time and that it’s like it’s a family environment, and that allows us to play together better. And I think that Lonnie does a really good job of cultivating that and bringing people into the room that help elevate that standard.

On Impact of Nutrition and Strength Staff…

So Yimy is fantastic. He’s completely changed our program and their outlook when it comes to nutrition. I think that he’s actually a very large part of why we were so successful this season. He won us a lot of those games because him and the strength staff together, because, you know, we were in shape and we were mitigating injuries to the best of our ability because we were eating right, we were training right, etc., and we were able to last longer than the other team in a lot of those games. Those close games where, you know, it comes down to a last drive, it comes down to a last play, etc. We were able to get it done because we fueled our bodies correctly. We had trained that kind of scenario, and it wasn’t new to us. You know what I mean? Like, we were prepared, mentally prepared, physically prepared for everything.

And I think that he has taken it upon himself to completely change the program, which I think he has. People respect him. People do what he says. There’s no, you know, there’s a little bit of— there’s no backlash, but he works with us. You know what I mean? It’s not like he’s in there like, ‘Eat this or, you know, you’re not going to succeed or whatever.’ Like, he works with you. You know, he’s a great down-to-earth guy. He understands what we go through. I know he played professional baseball for a while, so he gets the grind of the sport, etc.

But, yeah, as me personally, as an offensive lineman, I’m trying to gain weight right now, so I’ve got to eat a gram of protein for every pound of body weight that I weigh. So that’s probably about 315 grams. I try to get 315 grams of protein a day, which isn’t terrible if you mix it in shakes, I think. The key is mix it in shakes because you’d never get that with just whole foods. So it’s impossible to eat that much, to get that much protein. And I try to eat around 5,500 calories a day or something like that. I have an app. Well, actually, Yimy has set up an app for us where we can track our meals, which I didn’t have before he got here. But that’s another example of him trying to change the program is that we have an application now on our phones where we can track meals, we can input the food that we eat, and it calculates calories, protein, everything, so we can keep track. We can keep track of what we eat every day, where it’s down to a science and not a guessing game.

On the strength staff…

Yeah, so I love Luke (Day). He’s a man of God. And he doesn’t take crap from anybody in our program. You can love him or hate him, but he’s going to be the same to you anytime. Chip Morton as well. Chip is a guru. I try to pick Chip’s brain about movement patterns and stuff like that because he’s been around the game for 50 years. He’s one of the most experienced people in weight training that I’ve ever met, and I try to use him as a resource. You can’t find that everywhere.

We make active tweaks to everything we do, especially if we’re suffering more soft tissue injuries. We’ll tweak this and that. But what we did last year worked pretty well for our team, so we’re trying to build off that. I’ll definitely revamp some stuff. Winter is more about mass-building, while summer is about getting into playing shape. Winter is about building mass, and summer is more about aerobic capacity. It’s a good system and unique for our program. Everyone who comes in here says they’ve never done anything like this at other schools, but we win games, so it works.

On playing in “pro-style” systems…

Definitely, it’s helped me increase my football IQ. I’ve learned how important studying the game is, which I didn’t understand when I first got here. Taking notes, watching film—I’ve learned how important that is because you can’t understand the scheme without diving into the base of it. You need to build up from the ground and understand what you’re doing and why you’re doing it. The ‘why’ is huge. If you understand the why of the play and what you’re doing, you understand the play through and through.

If you understand defenses, you understand why you run certain things. Lonnie emphasizes learning the defense, the defensive structures, fronts, etc. We just went through a lot of that as pre-knowledge before we dive into learning our offense. I can’t give you any updates on our offense right now because we haven’t met with Coach Shula yet. But I’m sure Mike will put his twist on things, and I trust him. I respect him, and when it comes to offensive stuff, he knows best. He’s been doing this longer than any of us, and I trust him. He’ll use LaNorris (Sellers) to the best of his ability, and I’ll block for LaNorris to the best of my ability.”

On blocking for LaNorris Sellers…

Yeah, I’m definitely locked in on what I’m doing on the field (during a play) but the sacks that he has broken do not go unappreciated by our offensive line. It’s amazing some of the things he gets out of. That’s what he does. That’s what makes him a great player. I think he’ll turn it up even more this year. He’s super focused, and from what I’ve seen, he’s ready to take it to the next level. I think people should be excited. As an offensive lineman, I’m excited to block for him. It’s really fun to be a part of.

On addition of Shawn Elliott as run game coordinator…

Coach Elliott is one of the most energetic human beings I’ve ever met in my entire life. He’s the same guy every day and incredibly intense. I love having coaches like that because I grew up with coaches like that, so my dad and the coaches I grew up with were super intense, so it feels familiar to me. When the tackles work with the tight ends, he’ll come in and coach us, give us pointers on run fits and where we should fit in the combo. So I get coached by him too.

I mainly defer to Lonnie when it comes to offensive line stuff, but he’s definitely an added voice and he’s definitely helped me refine my technique. He gives me little tips and pointers, because he does know what he’s taking about when it comes to offensive line. He’s coached successfully for a while. Having more than one person who knows what they’re talking about is — Teasley is a guru on offensive line stuff, and Shawn too. We’ve got guys who understand the position all over the offense. And Coach (Greg) Adkins as well, who’s still with us. And Roger and Rud, our GAs, all know what they’re talking about. It’s helpful to hear different opinions on what you’re doing and figure out what works for you. It’s good for young guys to get those different opinions from different people and kind of build their craft.

On offseason goals…

For technique, I want to focus specifically on hand placement in both the run game and pass game. I think that’s where I lacked this year. I’m really going to harp on that this offseason, getting my hands correct, my elbows correct. Because I think that my sets were good, but my hand placement at the top of the rush and at the point of attack could’ve been better. I’m going to drill that a lot this offseason. I have that written down that I’m going to rep that a lot.

And then just run fits, pass fits, and getting my footwork back correct. During the season, we didn’t practice a lot of super basic fundamentals because you’re focused on scheme stuff, everything was schemed up. We’re going to get back to fundamentals, especially during this time when we don’t have football going on, pre-spring practice and all that. So I’m trying to work on my hand placement, my feet, quickness in the box, etc., my first step and everything. I’m trying to get as elite as I can at that before the season starts.

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