Mike Cavanaugh: ‘He coaches you hard and loves you harder’
When Mike Cavanaugh coached the offensive line at Oregon State from 2005-14, he had several great players such as Isaac Seumalo (56)
Updated 6/22/2025 2:10 PM
CORVALLIS — Mr. Rough & Tough is back in the saddle at Oregon State. Some of his current players call him “OG.”
“That is for ‘Old Guy’ instead of ‘Original Gangster,’ ” chuckles Mike Cavanaugh, the Beavers’ new offensive line coach.
Cavanaugh, 62, is a veteran of nearly 40 years coaching football, all but two years at the collegiate level. Most of the coaches on head coach Trent Bray’s current staff are in their 30s, 40s or early 50s. The other old-timers are Robb Akey (Bray’s special assistant) and Mark Criner (defensive quality control), who are both 58.
“I still have a lot of gas left in the tank,” Cavanaugh says.
For a decade, from 2005-14, “Cav” put together outstanding O-lines for head coach Mike Riley’s balanced offenses.
When DeVan — hired to coach the Oregon State O-line soon after Bray got the job in December 2023 — left in February to assist coaching the O-line with the Chicago Bears, it didn’t take Bray long to choose a replacement. Trent was an All-Pac-10 middle linebacker as a senior in 2005, Cavanaugh’s first year at OSU. Bray and Cavanaugh then coached together for five seasons — two with the Beavers and three at Nebraska. They got to know each other well.
“So when Trent called (to offer the job), honestly, it was a pretty fast decision,” Cavanaugh says.
For the previous two years, Cavanaugh had worked as a “senior analyst” (assistant O-line coach) at, of all places, Oregon.
“I texted Cav when I saw that Trent had hired him,” says Andy Levitre, the greatest player Cavanaugh coached during his time at OSU. “I was like, ‘I cannot picture you in green and yellow. Something just doesn’t look right here.’ ”
Cavanaugh says the person who had “the hardest time with it” was former Oregon O-line coach Steve Greatwood, a long-time close friend of Cav’s who is now retired and lives in Bend. Another guy who razzed Cavanaugh about it was Chip Kelly, the ex-Duck head coach who last season was offensive coordinator at Ohio State. Cav and Kelly — now O-coordinator for the Las Vegas Raiders — spent some time together before the Rose Bowl game.
“I have to be completely honest with you,” Kelly told Cavanaugh. “You look weird in green and yellow.”
But Cavanaugh enjoyed his time working under Oregon head coach Dan Lanning and with O-line coach A’lique Terry.
“I loved Dan,” Cav says. “He was great to work for. We had a really good staff. It was a good two years there.
“When I first got to Oregon, the Nike coaches clinic was going on in Portland. Dan says to me, ‘Get your Oregon stuff on. Go up there, get your balls busted and get it over with.’ ”
Now Cavanaugh is back on familiar turf, where he had by far the longest stint of his coaching career. He is reunited with Bray, with offensive coordinator Ryan Gunderson — who played quarterback when Cav was at OSU and later was director of player personnel there and at Nebraska — and with Danny Langsdorf, who was O-coordinator when Cav was at OSU and is now a senior offensive analyst.
“It has been great to be back with Trent and Gundy and Danny,” Cavanaugh says. “We have a really good staff. I love the coaches here. Good people. That’s where it starts. Trent is all about hiring good people, good coaches, guys who connect, and guys who can make players better. I am excited to be here to work with everybody.”
Cavanaugh and wife Laurie haven’t yet purchased a house in the Corvallis area. They live in Junction City, in half-Beaver, half-Duck country between Corvallis and Eugene.
“We like it there,” Cav says. “We are looking around (in Corvallis), but the drive from Junction City isn’t bad. You do see a lot of logging trucks.”
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Cavanaugh grew up in Wallingford, Conn., today a city of about 45,000. He was the youngest of four children to Dick and Barbara Cavanaugh. Dick owned and ran a clothing store in town.
“It was a mom-and-pop operation that was open for more than 50 years,” Mike says. “I remember my Dad giving me some important advice on a career: ‘Do what you like to do, because you have to do it the rest of your life.’ ”
“I loved football,” said Cavanaugh, mostly a linebacker in high school and a middle ‘backer during his one season of college ball at Division II New Haven (Conn.). “I was tough, but I wasn’t that good. I was an overachiever.”
Cavanaugh began his coaching career as a grad assistant at Division II Albany in 1986. He was assigned to coach the offensive line. “That is where it all started,” Cav says. “It has been my passion ever since.”
By that time, Mike was a married man. Laurie Gilbride was a nurse who had cared for Mike’s mother when she was ill and in the hospital. Laurie knew a little about football. Older brother Kevin Gilbride would go on to coach in the NFL for more than 20 years, including 1 1/2 seasons as head coach of the San Diego Chargers.
Mike and Laurie have now been married for 40 years. Over that period, Cav has coached other than the O-line only once, when he served a year as defensive coordinator and linebackers coach at Division III Alma (Mich.) in 1989.
Cavanaugh bounced from Alma to Murray State to Sacred Heart to Ferris State before landing a job with the Chargers — hey, he knew the head coach — in 1997 as assistant O-line coach/quality control. “That is where I first became aware of Cav,” says Riley, who became the Chargers’ head coach in 1999, taking over for June Jones, who had been interim head coach after Gilbride was fired midway through the ’98 campaign.
When Jones took the Hawaii head job the next season, Cavanaugh went with him for a successful five-year run.
“Cav is one of the best O-line coaches around,” says Jones, retired and living in Honolulu. “He does a great job recruiting. He is a special guy. He has a big following. People all across the country respect what he has done.”
After the 2004 season, Riley moved Jim Gilstrap from coaching the O-line to an administrative position, opening the way for the hiring of Cavanaugh. They worked together for a decade at Oregon State and for three more years at Nebraska when Riley coached the Cornhuskers from 2015-17.
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“He has a unique style,” says Riley, retired and living in Corvallis. “It’s just Cav. He coaches hard, and the kids come back for more. He is a good teacher and very well-prepared. We had a lot of fun together. He was a fantastic guy to work with.”
Cavanaugh has similar thoughts about his time with Riley.
“You couldn’t work for a better guy, ever,” Cav says. “We are still good friends. Good memories, especially the impact all of us coaches have had on each other’s lives, and the players who were here. You impact both ways. It was a great run. We accomplished a lot. That was fun.”
The Beavers played in eight bowl games through Cavanaugh’s 10 years. Twice, a Civil War defeat kept them out of the Rose Bowl. Cav coached and developed such talent as Kyle DeVan, Andy Levitre, Mike Remmers, Roy Schuening, Isaac Seumalo and Jeremy Perry. All but Perry played in the NFL. As a sophomore, Perry suffered a knee injury in the final game against Hawaii, then broke a leg in the season opener against Utah the next season.
“Jeremy was never the same after that,” Cavanaugh says. “Throughout my career, I have had 40 guys who were drafted or signed as free agents in the NFL. He was as tough or tougher than any of them. It is too bad what happened to him.”
Riley relied on Cavanaugh for a lot of duties.
“I was the run game coordinator,” Cav says. “I didn’t need the title; that was just part of our makeup. People used to ask, ‘Do you ever want to be a coordinator?’ I would say, ‘I am a coordinator. I coordinate five guys.’ ”
“Cav game-planned not only the run game but the (pass) protections,” Riley says. “With the actions and patterns I had planned for, we would put together the protections we would use. He coordinated the front part of that and the running game.
“Then the other (offensive) coaches and I would get together with him to insert the play-action stuff we would use off the run game we had implemented. Separately, we did what we needed to do in the drop-back pass game, and then got back with Cav and told him, ‘These are the patterns we were going to use,’ which would dictate what kind of protections to go with it.”
Riley says Cavanaugh is a “diligent recruiter and super (talent) evaluator.”
“You meet Cav and you love him,” Riley says. “He had a great way with families. I would go on a home visit to a place where he had already been and it was always easy. He had established such a good rapport with the school, with the coaches, with the families. Recruiting was an all-around job. You had to touch all those people. It came natural for Cav.”
Cavanaugh says he has always enjoyed recruiting because “I love people.”
“One of the things Dan (Lanning) asked when I told him I was leaving (Oregon) was, ‘Are you sure you want to get back on the road recruiting?’ ” Cavanaugh says. “I went out this spring (after spring ball) and it wasn’t bad. I was in Michigan, Chicago, Missouri, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, Nevada, Arizona and California.
“It’s all good. The biggest part is making a connection. One of the things I bring to the table is being able to connect with people. I like to meet with people and talk to them and get a feel for what they are looking for in a football program.”
Riley’s O-line coach with the Chargers was the late Joe Bugel, who coached in the NFL for more than 30 years.
“Joe was one of the all-time great line coaches,” Riley says. “He was fantastic, and I put Cav in that category.”
After Riley was let go by Nebraska, Cavanaugh coached three years at Syracuse and two at Arizona State before taking the job at Oregon in 2023.
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I reached out to four of Cavanaugh’s greatest O-linemen at Oregon State — who also happen to be among his favorites — for comments on their former coach.
Levitre, who played at Oregon State from 2005-08, is probably the greatest O-lineman in school history. Cav has called him “the most complete player I have ever coached.”
A first-team All-American as a senior, Levitre ended up at tackle at OSU but played mostly guard in the NFL. He played 10 years in the NFL, starting all 143 games he played in with the Bills, Titans and Falcons. Levitre, who made the All-Rookie team in 2009, started for Atlanta in the 2018 Super Bowl.
Remmers, at OSU from 2007-11, arrived on campus as a walk-on and exited as a four-year starter, starting his final 44 games in a row at guard and tackle. Undrafted by the NFL, he wound up playing 10 seasons for six teams — mostly at tackle — and starting in 91 of the 104 games in which he played. Remmers started in two Super Bowls — with the Panthers in 2016 and the Chiefs in ’21.
Schuening, at OSU from 2003-07, became a starter as a redshirt freshman and still holds the school record for most consecutive starts with 50, playing both guard and tackle. He was a first-team All-Pac-10 selection as a senior. Schuening spent three years in the NFL, mostly on practice squads with St. Louis, Oakland and Detroit, and got in one game with the Rams.
DeVan, also at OSU from 2003-07, was a three-year starter at center for the Beavers. During his time, they were 10-2 against their Northwest rivals — 4-0 vs. Washington, 3-1 vs Oregon and Washington State — and beat every Pac-10 opponent except UCLA. DeVan played guard through four NFL seasons for Indianapolis, Philadelphia and Tennessee, starting for the Colts in the 2010 Super Bowl.
Levitre took time away from his family vacation in Europe to return a call.
Remmers took a break from a fishing trip on the Columbia to pay his respects.
Schuening made himself available late in the evening — after a Little League All-Star practice — to talk about his coach.
DeVan, now assistant line coach with the Chicago Bears, was glad to talk after returning from a trip to Omaha to watch the Beavers play in the College World Series. “Spent the weekend with Trent Bray,” Kyle says.
There was unanimous assent to the hiring of Cavanaugh at their alma mater.
“When Trent took the job, I was like, ‘It’s gotta be Kyle or Cav,’ ” says Levitre, 39. “Kyle got it, which was great. But man was I glad to see Cav come in after Kyle left.”
“It is great to have Coach Cav back in Corvallis,” says Remmers, 36. “All is right in the world now.”
“I was a little disappointed when I found out Kyle was leaving,” says Schuening, 41. “About two days later, Cav called me and said, ‘I am coming back.’ I didn’t know if I was more excited or more scared for the kids at Oregon State now.”
Schuening laughs. He is kidding — sort of. As a coach, Cav can be scary, gruff and tough. He arrived in Corvallis from Hawaii after Schuening’s redshirt freshman year, during which Roy started all season and was named to the Freshman All-America team.
“The first thing he said to me was, ‘If you played at Hawaii, you wouldn’t have been in our two-deep,’ ” Schuening says. “It blew me away. What is this guy talking about? He said, ‘You have a ton to work on. If you trust me, I will get you to where you want to go.’ I 100 percent bought in, and he was right. It was amazing how much I had to learn.
“He will bring back a whole ‘nother level of toughness that we have needed for awhile. We have had some great offensive lines over the last seven or eight years, back to when Jonathan (Smith) got things going and (Jim) Michalzcik was with him, and then Kyle last year. The one thing that Cav brings with him is that toughness and big expectations for his players.”
All four of the ex-players used the same phrase in describing the Cavanaugh coaching style: “He coaches hard and loves you harder.”
“Cav was a hard-ass,” Levitre says with a chuckle. “But having experienced many coaches in my lifetime, I am so grateful to have had him — especially in college — helping me get the right mindset for what it takes to be successful at the position. He is super smart. He covered a lot of things that get looked over at the position.
“He always preached having a strong ‘punch.’ I took pride in that. Pretty much my whole NFL career, I worked a lot on that. That was one of the attributes people would comment about me — I had a good punch. I owe that to Cav.”
“He is one of my all-time favorite coaches,” Remmers says. “He squeezed every bit out of me when it came to my performance on the field. One thing I loved about him — he demanded perfection. He put stress on us to do well in practice. When we got to games, I wasn’t as nervous about screwing up as I was in practice.
“He has a great football mind — so much knowledge. He was very demanding. When I was a redshirt freshman and it was looking like I was going to get an opportunity to play, he saw the potential in me before I ever did. He knew what I was capable of before I realized it. He was able to push me in that direction and help me fight through growing pains and learning the ins and outs of being a great offensive lineman.”
“I love Cav to death,” Schuening says. “All the success I had was due to that man and Coach Riley. Cav did wonders with me. He wants nothing but the best for his guys. He is quick to let you know when you are not living up to the standard he expects, but he is also quick to throw his arm around you and love on you and be there for you when you need him.
“He is the ultimate players’ coach. He is not going to lie to you. He is going to tell you the truth straight to your face. Having him as my coach was a huge part of me reaching a lot of the goals I set for myself.”
DeVan is in the unique position of having played for Cavanaugh and also preceded him as O-line coach at OSU.
“I think the world of Cav, from a player’s vantage point and from a mentor as I am a coach now,” DeVan says. “He has been impactful on my life, both athletically and professionally. He is one of the best in the business.
“He is a stickler for technique, which is what defines all good O-line coaches. Anyone who has been around him knows he is going to push those guys, with what I think will be a lot of similarity to what I was doing. He is going to spend every waking minute of those guys’ time on technique and fundamentals and making them play the best they can play.”
Says Cavanaugh: “When I got here, Roy was like, ‘Shoot Cav, we have done more fundamentals in five minutes under you than I did in the two years before you got here.’ It’s the same with the guys I am coaching right now. We work hard on fundamentals. We do everything in a right- and left-handed stance. Today, you can’t say you are a left tackle. If you are the sixth guy, you had better be able to play right tackle. Versatility is huge. In that part, I haven’t changed how I coach.”
In other ways, though, Cav can’t be like he was at Oregon State many years ago. In talking about his former players, he says, “I appreciate how hard they worked. We were always smart. We were tougher than our opponents most of the time. They bought into everything I taught, and I put them through a lot. You can’t do that stuff today.”
Like what? Cav smiles.
“Throwing my hat at somebody, or really getting after guys, grabbing them to get their attention,” he says. “Some of the antics, you can’t do that anymore. Society has changed. Social media has changed things. You probably would get fired for throwing your hat at somebody today.”
DeVan has been part of the evolutionary process of coaching.
“There was plenty of stuff he did, I look back 20 years later and think, ‘Whoa, I don’t know if I can use what Cav did back then,’ ” he says. “But that is what made him special. He would grind you and then love you. He and Laurie would take us into their home and serve you chicken and steak. They were always very welcoming.”
Schuening has concerns about the athletes of today who are so strongly influenced by NIL and the transfer portal.
“It is a different world now,” says Schuening, who lives in Pendleton and is manager of food safety and quality manager at Lamb Weston. “We will see more entitlement from players. Guys are opting out because they don’t like the contract they have. There is going to be a ripple effect. Coaches have to handle themselves differently.
“When I was at Oregon State, what drove me was my love for the game and how much I love Corvallis, how much I loved being a Beaver, Cav, Coach Riley and my teammates. That drove me to want to be the best I could be and to continue to work. It will be interesting to see if you can still be the kind of coach that, when you need to, you can tear into your player a little bit to motivate him. I don’t see that being reality. Kids now look at it and think, ‘I’ll go somewhere else.’ ”
Remmers thinks along the same lines.
“I would hate to be a coach now with how easy and common it is for kids to transfer,” says Remmers, who retired after the 2022 NFL season and is living in Beaverton. “Coach Cav pushed me harder than I would have pushed myself. That is what you need as a player. If you are trying to get stronger, your mind and body are going to give up. You need someone there to push you over that edge, to get that last rep or whatever it is. That’s exactly what he did with me
“Kids have physical gifts but need that extra bit of motivation. Playing football is uncomfortable, and it is supposed to be. You go out in (training) camp and you grind and you grind. When you want to give up, that is when you keep grinding more. When you get to the end of the game and you have a two-minute drive to win it and you are tired, you want to give up. But Coach Cav was there to motivate you to keep pushing yourself even harder and get you to the finish line. I responded to that. I like when my coach is challenging me.
“I fear that a lot of the coaches today — not just Coach Cav — may feel like, ‘Maybe I better suck up to this kid, tell him how great he is, so he doesn’t transfer,’ and won’t coach him as hard.”
One of Cavanaugh’s staples during his first run at Oregon State was using “bear crawls,” both for fitness and a disciplinary measure. On all fours, the player goes forward for five yards, backward for five, to the right for five, to the left for five.
“The No. 1 question I get asked from my former players is, ‘Do you still bear crawl the guys?’ ” Cavanaugh says, chuckling again. “We do, but today you have to be smarter and convince (the players) that it is good for you, good for your core, which it is.
“I like it because it’s hard. You have to embrace hard. Especially playing offensive line, there is a lot of stuff you have to fight through. I always say ‘PTA’ — pain, torture and agony. It is hard, but if you embrace it, you will be able to fight through a lot of things.”
Remmers recalls bear crawls as motivation to avoid making mistakes.
“We always got in our head, ‘Let’s not screw this up or we are going to all be doing 100 yards of bear crawls,’ ” he says. “You don’t want to make a mental error. I hated them so much, but my goodness, does it work on your upper body and core strength. There are a lot of huge benefits.
“After I got done playing and was training at a place in Beaverton, we were doing bear crawls all the time. At that point, I was like a professional bear crawler.”
Cavanaugh may handle today’s athletes with a lighter touch, “but I definitely am old-school,” he says. “Some of the old behavior is gone, but as far as teaching the game, I am still the same.”
Many of his former players stay in touch with Cavanaugh.
“I met him for lunch a couple of weeks ago,” Remmers says. “It is always great catching up with him. He is a tough-love kind of coach on the field, but off the field, he is the nicest guy ever. Coach Cav and his entire family are great.”
“Last time I was in Oregon, I visited him in Eugene a year or two ago,” Levitre says. I love the guy. Super personable. Cares about the family. Just a good dude. He knows how to turn it on and turn it off, between football and life.”
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Cavanaugh is excited to be back at Oregon State, where “we have that blue-collar mentality” (courtesy OSU sports communications)
Cavanaugh is still getting used to the Beaver O-linemen in “Cav II,” but he says he has been impressed.
“I love our group,” he says. “We made great strides fundamentally in the spring.”
Injuries to many of the regulars kept them off the field during the spring, though they were at practices, observing and listening to the coach’s instructions.
College coaches have limited availability to the players in the summer. Players run their own “PLPs” (player-led practices).
“We have some time for meetings to give them what we want them to do on the field,” Cavanaugh says. “When they left after spring term for a break, I gave them a list of things to do.”
Preseason training camp begins on July 29. The Beavers’ opener is at home against California on Aug. 30.
“Gundy and I have already done some early game-planning,” Cavanaugh says.
Cavanaugh says all starting positions are open, though he concedes that Van Wells, a 6-2, 295-pound senior, will likely be the starter again at center. Wells missed all of spring ball due to what Cav calls “chronic injuries,” but should be ready for the start of camp.
“Watching his (video), I can tell he is a good player, smart, seasoned and tough,” Cav says.
Tyler Voltin, a 6-4, 380-pound senior guard, is coming off ACL knee surgery and missed spring ball. Cav isn’t sure about his availability when camp opens.
“He is a freaky good athlete,” Cav says. “I like him a lot.”
Another strong candidate at guard is Dylan Sikorski, a 6-4, 340-pound redshirt freshman who also was out of spring ball with a knee injury. He probably won’t be ready for the start of camp, “but he has a lot of promise and upside,” Cav says.
Josiah Timoteo, a 6-4, 310-pound sophomore, “is a good athlete who played a lot of tackle in the spring, but is built more like a guard,” Cav says.
Tyler Morano, a 6-5, 295-pound senior tackle, is “close to being back 100 percent” after Achilles tendon surgery. Jacob Strand, a 6-5, 300-pound junior, missed the spring with a knee injury.
“Tyler and Jacob both did a lot of individual stuff during the spring, and they worked their tails off,” Cav says.
Cavanaugh likes two other youngsters, both redshirt freshmen: 6-5, 305-pound Jaydon Tuia and 6-5, 300-pound Adam Hawkes. “I like their attitude and work ethic,” Cav says. “They are going to develop into good players.”
Cavanaugh has focused mostly on getting to know “my own guys,” but offers observations on a pair of offensive starters — quarterback Maalik Murphy and running back Anthony Hankerson.
“Maalik has been around the office a lot, and he seems like a great kid,” Cav says. “He is a big, good-looking guy who is smart and talented. I really like ‘Hank.’ He is a talented guy who can catch the ball out of the backfield, can block and is a tremendous runner.”
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Cavanaugh approaches his current job as if he were the foreman of a building project in its early stages.
“I haven’t had a recruiting class yet,” he says. “The first one will be the class of ’26. I am looking for guys who can develop. I want guys who are smart and tough and are willing to put the work in and get after it.”
If Oregon State’s talent isn’t quite the same level as it had been before the breakup of the Pac-12 — and that seems obvious — Cavanaugh says he is oblivious.
“I don’t look at it like that,” he says. “I don’t coach them any different. My job has always been to develop guys. That is what I love doing.”
Cavanaugh says he feels at home at Oregon State.
“It is a place where hard work works,” he says. “As far as football, nothing has changed. We are going to do the same things — work hard, outwork people. We have that blue-collar mentality. I love that about this place.”
Goals for the 2025 season?
“I want to keep my guys healthy, first and foremost,” he says. “I want to see improvement every week. I want to establish the running game, protect the quarterback and have a hell of an offense.”
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