GREENSBURG, La. – It’s just about 90 miles from the heart of the French Quarter to here.
The trip takes you west along Interstate 10, with swamplands to the left and Lake Pontchartrain to the right, then north up I-55 past Lake Maurepas.
With no traffic, it can be done in about 75 minutes, thanks to Louisiana’s generous 70 mph speed limit.
While the geographic distance may be short, this is a figurative world away from New Orleans, one of the nation’s most distinctive cities. The flashing lights of Bourbon Street give way here to the occasional firefly lighting up the night sky.
Buffalo Bills vs Arizona Cardinals (copy)
Bills guard O’Cyrus Torrence, left, has started every game, with the exception of one, in front of quarterback Josh Allen over the past two seasons. Joshua Bessex, Buffalo News
As of the 2020 census, the town – all 2½ square miles of it – had a population of 629. Counted among them just happens to be O’Cyrus Torrence, the Buffalo Bills’ starting right guard for the past two seasons.
People are also reading…
It’s here, under the punishing summer sun, that Torrence went from pushing 425 pounds in high school to turning himself first into an NFL prospect, and now a key part of the Bills’ future as one of general manager Brandon Beane’s best draft decisions.
The day before the Super Bowl, with the sting of his team’s loss to the Kansas City Chiefs in the AFC championship game still fresh, Torrence took The Buffalo News on a tour of his hometown, retracing his humble beginnings.
“I’m appreciative of how I grew up,” Torrence said in a wide-ranging series of interviews. “It’s how I got tough.”
As he spoke, seated at a picnic table outside his childhood home, a truck drove by and slowed to a crawl. The window rolled down and a loud call of “Cybo!” bellowed out.
“Do you know him?” Torrence was asked.
“I think so,” he said, “you kind of know everybody here.”
St. Helena College and Career Academy
The playing field at St. Helena College and Career Academy in Greensburg, La., hometown of Bills guard O'Cyrus Torrence. The field is artificial now but was natural grass when Torrence played there. Jay Skurski, Buffalo News
The St. Helena days
Torrence arranged to meet a Buffalo News reporter at the local gas station on the way into town. Fittingly enough, the Big Guy’s Diner was attached to the Chevron. Lunch would come later, though. The first stop on the tour was St. Helena College and Career Academy. It’s there that Torrence first realized as a high school freshman that football could be his path not only to college, but perhaps something far greater.
Since Torrence graduated in 2018, the Hawks have added a new artificial turf field. Torrence, however, remembered it as a grass field on which he became an all-state player.
“To see where I come from, it helps me stay grounded,” he said. “You don’t have to come from much to make something great out of your situation, you’ve just got to have the right chances and opportunities and meet the right people. I think I’ve met those people in my life and in my career growing up.”
The tour was only just beginning. Torrence next wanted to go where his football career really started – a grass field next to the St. Helena Early Learning Center just a couple minutes away that looked to be dying for some water. That’s where he first started playing little league football as a 10-year-old. The first time he came to practice, a coach had to lift him onto a tractor trailer loaded with pads and helmets to choose from. Torrence found a set of pads that fit, but he had no such luck with a helmet. His head was too big.
“I had to sit on the sideline until my helmet came in,” he said with a laugh.
Torrence only played for a couple of years before briefly moving to a different school district and giving up the sport. He returned to St. Helena for eighth grade, and it was around that time that Brandon Brown started to wage his campaign.
O'Cyrus Torrence
O’Cyrus Torrence, right, then a two-way lineman at St. Helena High School, tries to bring down Madison Prep quarterback Edwin Kleinpeter during the Louisiana Class 2A state semifinals Dec. 2, 2016, at Memorial Stadium in Baton Rouge, La. Torrence, a native of tiny Greensburg, La., weighed more than 400 pounds before football made him into a leaner, more determined college prospect. Hilary Scheinuk, The Advocate
Then the head football coach and athletic director at St. Helena, Brown wanted Torrence to at least come out for the team. With a graduating class of just 42 students, Brown needed all available bodies to fill out a roster. He had another reason to persuade Torrence, too.
“He was just a regular student, but he was a really big kid. His first physical, he was 418 pounds to be exact,” Brown said. “I would always see him in the hallway, like, ‘Hey, look, I want you to come play football.’ He would laugh and shrug it off. He was always a shy kid, never said much at all. He’s similar still.”
Torrence, who today measures 6-foot-5 and 347 pounds, reached 425 pounds in the eighth grade. He began to hear Brown’s voice in his head, explaining to him that it was going to be hard to go through life at that size.
“I honestly started it first just to lose weight,” Torrence said of playing football in high school. “It got (Brown) off my back a little bit, but it turned into something more. I’m in love with it now.”
Torrence didn’t immediately feel that way. In fact, he told Brown at one point that he was going to quit.
“He said, ‘I don’t like it.’ I said, ‘You know what? You’re absolutely right. You don’t like football, you love football,’ ” Brown said. “I said, ‘Listen, you’re over 400 pounds, and you haven’t missed a day.’ South Louisiana has some really, really brutal summers. It’s real hot, and he was there every single day. He must love it.”
As he looked out over the barren practice field, Torrence recalled those steamy practices. The “gassers” – down and back, down and back – came when the summer sun was at its highest point. The water Torrence brought with him to the field was what he had for the day. If it were to get knocked over, or if the sun were to melt the ice, he needed to hope a teammate had some to share.
On this cloudless February day, the temperature soared past 80 degrees. Torrence was dressed all in black, and sweat started to bead on his forehead as he spoke. It was easy to imagine the brutal, 95-degree-plus conditions during those high school practices.
“It all just helped mold me,” he said. “It was hard, hot days, but we enjoyed them when we were in it, because we didn’t know any better. We were just out here playing, not knowing these times would go so fast. Coming back here now, that’s what I think about, honestly.
“That’s why I like training camp. It reminds me of this a little bit, even though it’s nicer. It gives you the feeling that you’re off on your own, putting in the work that’s got to be put in.”
Brown could tell very early on in Torrence’s career that the potential to be something special was there. The flexibility, the bend in his knees and ankles – all of it was special for a person of his size and strength. Former NFL defensive lineman James Atkins, who had a seven-year professional career, volunteered with the St. Helena staff at the time, told Brown that Torrence had a future playing on Sundays. He just needed to believe in himself.
So that became Brown’s message. Over and over, he told Torrence: “One day, you’re going to be a millionaire playing this sport.”
“He bought in, started working out and the rest is history,” Brown said. “One day, he came up to me and said, ‘Coach Brown, can I ask you a question? Do you really believe I could be a millionaire?’ I said, ‘I know you can,’ and he just walked off. That’s when the light switch came on. … He worked for everything he got, and it’s so rewarding to see him grow as a player.”
O'Cyrus Torrence's childhood home
O'Cyrus Torrence's childhood home in Greensburg, La. Jay Skurski, Buffalo News
Tight quarters
The mobile home at 15 Leona Spears Road has three bedrooms and a single bathroom, but it doesn’t measure 1,000 square feet. Sharing that space with his grandmother, his mother and two brothers made for a tight squeeze. Torrence and his older brother shared a room, each sleeping on twin beds. His younger brother often slept on the couch in the living room – which Torrence actually preferred, because of its proximity to the lone TV.
“I mean, I liked it. It made us all close,” he said. “That’s how I learned how to cook. My younger brother watching TV, my older brother playing a game – I don’t want to watch either of them do that, so I just watch my grandma cook. We went outside a lot. We played out here a lot. It feels a little bit smaller now because the trees grew up a little bit, but it was a lot of space when we were younger.”
Torrence’s older cousins lived in a nearby mobile home, meaning there were always enough people around to get a touch football game together.
“That’s how I was raised. ... I didn’t look at it as a bad thing,” Torrence said. “I liked being out here barefoot, running through the woods, playing with animals. That’s why I like cats and dogs now, because we had a bunch of cats and dogs around here when I was growing up.”
Torrence joked that it’s still a bit of an adjustment, the change in weather from Louisiana to Buffalo.
“I look at my Ring camera and see the snow coming down and get a little bit of a chill,” he said.
Otherwise, he feels right at home in Western New York. He’s even found a place about 20 minutes from the Bills’ Orchard Park facility that’s decidedly rural.
“People-wise and area-wise, here feels like there a little bit. It’s simple,” he said. “I’m off in the woods, so it’s got a nice home feeling.”
Torrence takes a deep appreciation of where he’s from.
“Not saying it’s harder to do this than it is coming from a big city, but it feels better being a diamond in the rough, if that makes sense,” he said. “I had the right opportunities to get brushed off and shine and bring some light on this area – not just myself, but everybody around here.”
The mobile home Torrence grew up in is now mostly empty, although his older brother sometimes stays there. The land has stayed in the family, however, and Torrence hopes to one day buy it and build a more permanent home on the property. He has four brothers and two sisters, all of whom still live in or near St. Helena Parish, as well as several other family members in the area.
On March 30, he’ll return to his high school to conduct his first football camp. That’s something that would have made his day as a kid, and now he gets to give back to those growing up in similar circumstances. Torrence has heard that several kids in his hometown now look forward to playing on the line of scrimmage because of him.
“It was the exact opposite when I was growing up,” he said. “Everybody was trying to be skill players. The only guys to play line was the guys too big to do anything else. That resonates with me a lot.”
In late July, right before the Bills report to training camp, Torrence also hopes to have his first back-to-school drive, supplying backpacks and other school supplies to kids in need.
“I think my perspective has changed in the NFL,” said Torrence, 25. “I’m not just here for myself. I have opportunities to help people around me. That’s what I’ve realized. Part of the reason I’m here is to do that (is) not just be a great football player, but also be a great person and help out the people who helped me get to where I wanted to be.”
A hometown hero
At the barren practice field, a different car sped by before quickly turning around and pulling up.
“Cybo, is that you? Are you doing an interview?” Quanika Muse shouted from the driver’s seat.
“Kind of,” he responded.
Muse, a Greensburg resident and St. Helena Parish Police Jury Member – think of an Erie County legislator – then pulled up to say hello. She spoke for all of the nearly 11,000 residents of St. Helena Parish about what Torrence’s success has meant.
“We’re a tight-knit community, but by us being such a small town, we’re not always able to get the funds that this parish needs,” she said. “We’re a rural community. Taking something from nothing, what he has done, means a lot for our whole community. It’s taking that adversity and working with it.”
Greensburg is one of the oldest towns in Louisiana. It has two 19th-century properties listed on the National Register of Historic Places – the old land office and the old parish jail. There is not a single stoplight in the town.
“Life here is hard. It’s a poverty-stricken area,” Brown said. “There is a lack of resources.”
St. Helena was Brown’s first job as a head coach, and he made those challenges part of the team’s identity. His slogan was, “We’re a small town, but we have big expectations.” With Torrence as one of the team’s leaders, St. Helena advanced all the way to the Class 2A state championship game during the 2017 season.
“I had great, hard-working kids, who just needed someone to believe in them, Brown said. “O’Cyrus exemplified that.”
Muse’s son, Brant, played football with Torrence in both little league and high school.
“If everybody knew he was here, they would probably be down here seeing him. Everybody was praying he’d be the one to go to the Super Bowl,” she said. “To get as far as he did, that is so amazing for the school. I was just driving by and said, ‘Oh, that’s Cybo. Let me turn around.’ ”
Muse called Torrence a “gentle giant” – a description used over and over by those in Greensburg who have watched him grow up.
“He’s always been the same young man,” she said. “I can’t say ‘child.’ Young man. He’s never changed. He never gets upset. He just takes any frustration that he may have and puts it on the field and dominates.”
That’s something Brown had to coach into him.
“Absolutely, he’s a gentle giant,” the coach said. “When he played against a smaller opponent, he’d make his block – but I’d be like, ‘Cybo, what’s going on? He’d say, ‘coach, I don’t want to hurt him.’ That’s how he always was. I was like, ‘I need you to dominate.’ A gentle giant, a great kid, and very, very humble. He accepted the coaching and he wanted to get better every day.”
After games or practices, it was common for members of the St. Helena football team to gather at Country Gals Café off Highway 10.
O'Cyrus Torrence
O'Cyrus Torrence stands with Pamela Topps at the Country Gals Café in Greensburg, La. Jay Skurski, Buffalo News
Pamela Topps, the owner, is a third cousin of Torrence. The modest restaurant is on a large plot surrounded by farmland. The menu features a lot of what you’d expect in Louisiana – crawfish, jambalaya, seafood pasta, dirty rice and corn nuggets.
“At Thanksgiving, we couldn’t do one or two turkeys, we had to do four or five, because Cybo was going to eat three or four or five plates, and he was going to take three or four or five plates,” Topps said. “But then he’ll get out there and be active. ... He would always do extra, give extra effort. He wanted better, and God blessed him.”
Topps can still recall Torrence lifting tractor tires on her property like they were nothing. Country strong, to be sure.
“We just knew that he was abnormal – in the best way,” she said. “We knew he was going to be something.”
Torrence didn’t always know it, though. Partly because of his weight, he struggled with self-confidence growing up. He’s a big fan of Anime, and specifically the series Naruto. One of the episodes that has stuck with him centered on a battle the main character had with himself. The message, Torrence said, was that to the only way to beat yourself is to be better than you were the day before.
Country Gals Café
A list of daily specials at the Country Gals Café in Greensburg, La. Jay Skurski, Buffalo News
That’s been his approach since he entered the NFL as a second-round draft pick in 2023.
“My confidence comes from myself, me being that weight and losing it,” he said. “From being not good at football to being good at football. It’s within me. I learned I can take myself as high as I want or as low as I want.
“My plan is just keep being better than yesterday, better than last year, better than last week. I compete with myself every day, and if I can continue to do that at the highest level for as long as I can, I feel like the sky is the limit for my career.”
An ascending talent
Torrence finished his high school career as the No. 58-ranked overall recruit in Louisiana and the No. 146 offensive tackle in the nation – a three-star prospect, according to On3 Recruiting.
ACA.ultorrence1.adv
O’Cyrus Torrence, left, works during blocking drills during preseason camp Aug. 8, 2020, at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. Torrence spent his first three college seasons as a Ragin’ Cajun before he transferred to Florida. Brad Kemp, University of Louisiana at Lafayette
Although Georgia showed late interest during the recruiting process, he had his heart set on staying in-state, committing to the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. He became the first true freshman to start a game along the offensive line for the Ragin’ Cajuns since 2004, and ultimately started 13 of 14 games that freshman year in 2019. As a sophomore in 2020, he started all 11 games and was named to the All-Sun Belt Conference second team. As a junior in 2021, Torrence again started all 11 games and was named to conference’s first team.
Torrence did not allow a single sack during his three years at Louisiana. He transferred to Florida for the 2022 season, following head coach Billy Napier, who had played a big role in recruiting Torrence to Lafayette when he was there.
Torrence’s lone season in The Swamp was a massive success. He started 11 games and became the first Gators guard to be named a consensus All-American.
The Bills chose Torrence with the 59th overall pick in the 2023 draft, and in training camp, he beat out Ryan Bates for a starting job as a rookie. He hasn’t looked back. Torrence played every snap as a rookie and did not miss a start through his first two years, except for the team’s meaningless regular-season finale against New England.
“I didn’t realize it was too much of a big deal until the end of last year when I was told the stat,” Torrence said of playing every snap in 2023. “Some of the older players who didn’t give out compliments like that came and gave me a compliment on that. I guess sometimes I made it look easy – which for me, it wasn’t easy at all. Some people might say I made it look easy, but it was definitely one of the hardest things ever, was going in and being able to play all those games.
“I felt like it was my job – I had to go there and do it. I had to win out the job, and once I got the job, it’s my job to do this. No matter how I feel, I’ve got to go out there and play. It became the mentality thing. It was normal.”
On the Thursday before the Super Bowl, Bills quarterback Josh Allen won the league’s MVP award. One of the highlights that played on repeat was Allen’s fourth-down touchdown run against the Chiefs in the regular season.
Go back and watch Torrence closely on that play. He’s singled up against Kansas City defensive tackle Chris Jones – who will likely wear a gold jacket as a member of the Pro Football Hall of Fame one day. Torrence does his job, blocking Jones just enough to give Allen time to scramble.
“I get chills when I see that play now,” Torrence said. “It’s one of my favorite plays. I just live for those moments. The last (AFC championship) game against the Chiefs, it didn’t go our way, but going out there ... it’s a stressful and tough moment, but I live for it. I feel like I play my best in those moments. I rise to the occasion. I fall into my training.”
Undoubtedly, that approach was forged on the practice field in Greensburg.
“It’s a blessing. It’s wonderful to watch,” said Reginald Porter Sr., Torrence’s uncle. “He worked so hard to get where he is. … To come from where he came from and how hard he worked, missing no games, playing all the snaps, it’s a blessing. It makes me, his family, everyone else involved with him really, really proud.”
Utah Florida Football
Florida offensive lineman O’Cyrus Torrence celebrates a big gain against Utah in 2022, in Gainesville, Fla. Torrence, a native of Greensburg, La., spent his final college season with the Gators, having transferred from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. Gary McCullough, Associated Press
Porter served as a mentor of sorts for Torrence growing up. They spent plenty of time together on the weekends, either watching or practicing football.
“I don’t want to say it’s a dead end, but if you don’t have your mind made up and aspiration to go to college, you’re stuck there,” Porter said of Greensburg. “You have to want to leave to make something of yourself, and that’s what he did.”
While Torrence was in high school, Porter’s son, Reginald Jr., played college football at Utah and later bounced around the NFL for a brief time. Torrence wore a size-17 cleat in high school, which was hard to find, so his cousin would sometimes ship him pairs home from college.
“Cybo is absolutely the most humble kid,” Porter Sr. said. “Everywhere he went, he’d be wearing flip flops, but he never complained. He was always happy, always willing to work. That’s exactly who he is – he’d give you the shirt off his back.”
Seeing his nephew make it in the NFL hasn’t come as a surprise to Porter. In fact, it’s been the opposite.
“Oddy enough, I expected it,” he said, “because I watched how hard he worked.”
0 Comments
Get in the game with our Prep Sports Newsletter
Sent weekly directly to your inbox!