T’Vondre Sweat isn’t your average college football defensive tackle.

In fact, this Texas senior is as far from average as you can get.

In any number of ways, this guy’s a walking — or tackling — contradiction.

You can start with the fact that the 6-foot-4, 362-pound Longhorn is the toughest defensive player in the Big 12, yet he calls himself “a momma’s boy.”

Lashunda Ross confirms that’s true and reveals that she was the one who had to urge him at age 6 to move up from flag football to pads in the Pop Warner League. It helped that his aunt Lisa promised to bake him cookies for every first down and touchdown.

“After that, he wouldn't let no one get in his way. But at first, he wanted to go back to flag,” said Ross, a robust single mom of three boys. “But I said, ‘You got to be tough. You’ll be OK.’ ”

He has been better than OK.

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With his towering size and brute strength, Sweat is the best defensive player in the league, even if he doesn’t have the stats to prove it. His 40 tackles rank only a misleading fifth on his own team, with two sacks, but they don’t begin to reveal how important he’s been to Texas because he clogs up the middle like bacon grease does a kitchen sink.

Make no mistake, this is a Texas team littered with stars. But Sweat’s one of them, and he will play maybe the biggest role in the Longhorns’ first Big 12 championship game appearance in 14 years when he and the fifth-ranked run defense in college football try to shut down Oklahoma State and Ollie Gordon II, the nation’s leading rusher.

Gordon has scored 20 touchdowns and over the past nine games has run for a staggering 1,471 yards, but he’ll be facing a stout run defense that has kept seven opponents’ top back under 46 yards.

In fact, Sweat & Co. have allowed just one running back, Wyoming’s Harrison Waylee, to top 100 yards this season (Oklahoma quarterback Dillon Gabriel did as well), but he had a 62-yard touchdown run. On his other 17 carries, that Cowboy tailback averaged just 2 yards a carry.

“I’m not much into him,” a respectful Sweat said, “because I’m focused on what we have to do. It’s pretty awesome going against a guy like that.”

Sweat’s pretty awesome himself.

He’s the second-biggest player on the Longhorn roster, one back-for-seconds trip to the buffet line behind 369-pound offensive line teammate Cam Williams. But he’s also one of the quickest, with all kinds of explosive action, and has batted down four passes. Hey, he was an all-state football player at Huntsville and once had 4½ sacks in a single game against A&M Consolidated.

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But he also played basketball in high school. Try boxing him out. In fact, the desire to meet his childhood idol, former Longhorn All-American forward Kevin Durant, was one reason Sweat chose Texas over Texas A&M, Baylor and Houston. But regrettably, he has never met the 2014 NBA MVP and six-time All-Star.

“He always loved basketball more than he did football,” said Ross, a medical assistant in Houston. “Durant needs to meet my son. I bought every pair of KDs, even for Little Dribblers and YMCA.”

Now Sweat sticks to football and on defense, but his roommate is injured running back Jonathon Brooks. Something of an odd couple, but both have huge hearts and gentle spirits.

As gargantuan as Sweat is, he wasn’t all that big when he came here. Ross said he was skinny and tall in high school, but at 22, he’s a full-grown man.

“I was a little, small guy,” Sweat said. “Then I get here, and you get all this food. And I took advantage.”

Boy, has he. Ross isn’t surprised because she said he “could eat a whole pie by himself” at one sitting and even likes sushi.

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Sweat might be the only one in the Texas locker room who loves him some country western music. Don’t get him started on Luke Combs, whom he adores as his pregame go-to for inspiration. “He gets me going before games,” Sweat said Monday. Sweat’s wispy beard is much less full than the country singer’s, and no one’s seen Combs in thick dreads like Sweat lately.

Sweat is clearly one of the most intimidating and impactful players in all of college football and could probably benchpress Bevo XV, but off the field he’s one of the nicest and most playful.

“I love seeing people smile,” Sweat said.

But that wasn’t always the case.

“Out of all my three boys, he was the baddest,” Ross joked. “He stayed in trouble. He didn’t want to listen in school. Just wasn’t focused. He was a handful.”

He has matured into one of most likable Longhorns and a media favorite, but Ross said she’d have to make him stand in the corner or stand on one leg or write 100 times “I will not talk in school.”

That focus changed under defensive line coach Bo Davis to the point he’s rated the top defensive lineman by Pro Football Focus. He’s very honest and candid in his comments.

Did he approach his final college season almost as a contract year?

“One hundred percent,” Sweat said.

If so, he made good on this audition for the NFL. He said he'd love to buy Ross a house, but she said he used to kid her that he'd buy her a trailer.

"I told him I don't want no trailer," she said with a laugh.

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There might not be another player in college who made the strides that Sweat has. In the span of one season to the next, he’s gone from honorable mention All-Big 12 to one of three finalists for the Outland Trophy and a shoo-in for All-American. That’s astounding.

Sweat stands a great shot of becoming the fourth Longhorn to win the Outland, following in the large footsteps of Brad Shearer, Tommy Nobis and Scott Appleton.

“To win that would be awesome,” Sweat said. “It’d be the best feeling.”

Quite simply, Sweat is as good as these eyes have seen, a rival to former greats — men among boys — Doug English, Kenneth Sims and Casey Hampton in Longhorn lore.

He and teammate Byron Murphy II are ranked as the top two defensive tackles by Pro Football Focus, and Murphy is a likely third-round prospect, if only because his position isn’t valued as highly as quarterbacks, receivers, edge rushers and cornerbacks.

“He’s a little, short dog,” Sweat said of Murphy. “I’m a big ol’ tank. I’m the trash talker on the team. Which one of us are you going to block?”

Sweat’s nearly unblockable.

Can tight end Ja’Tavion Sanders block him?

“Not one on one,” Sanders said, laughing. “That’s a big man.”

Of course, Murphy’s got some bragging rights over his colleague. He’s at least caught a touchdown pass, reeling in a 1-yard reception against Wyoming.

Does Sweat want his own?

“Yeah,” he said, his eyes lighting up.

Both have been invited to the Senior Bowl, where they’ll have a chance to impress NFL scouts and coaches and bolster their draft status. Head coach Steve Sarkisian said he considers them “the best tandem in the country.” He raves about Sweat’s athleticism and calls Murphy “such a bulldog.”

“I hope one is the defensive player of the year and one is the defensive lineman of the year,” Sarkisian said. “I think they are deserving of that.”

He got his wish because Sweat and Murphy were just so honored by the Big 12 coaches Wednesday.

Part of the reason for Sweat’s success stems from his work ethic and film study as he tries to emulate his NFL role models at his position, such as Ndamukong Suh, Fletcher Cox, Cam Jordan and Aaron Donald. He also learns from former Longhorn and current New Orleans Saint Malcolm Roach, the last Texas defensive lineman taken in the first round when the Patriots chose him in 2015.

"Huge player who not only eats up blockers on the double team but can get rid of blockers quickly and make the play," NFLDraft.com analyst Lance Zierlein told me in assessing Sweat. "He will have a first-round grade from me, and I think he goes inside the top 40 picks."

Does Sweat think he’ll be chosen in the first round of the NFL draft?

“It’s in God’s plan,” he said.

This guy’s motor so never stops running that on one play against Texas Tech last Friday, Sweat actually knocked teammate Jaylan Ford off a tackle.

Big man’s got to eat, after all

“I asked him on the field about it, and he gave me a hug,” said Ford, Texas’ leading tackler. “That’s a big person. If you don’t account for him, he’s going to dominate the game. He’s unblockable. He’s an instant game-wrecker."

Off the field, however, he’s pretty funny. Everybody on the roster says so.

So who’s funnier, T-Sweat or you, Jahdae Barron?

The senior nickel back paused for a minute, then answered, “I would say that’d be Sweat. He’ll be funny even in serious matters.”

And Barron rarely concedes anything to anybody. Ross, too, said her son has “always been a comedian.”

“He’s a goofball,” Sanders said. “He makes everybody laugh all the time. You can just walk up to him and you’ll start laughing.”

On his serious side, he wears a heavy silver medallion that is roughly the size of Rhode Island and has pictures of his mom, his grandmother and his great uncle and announces to the world his personal message, “Make ’em Sweat.”

The woman who literally did make T’Vondre Sweat takes so much pride in her son that she’s missed only one football game, home or away, in his five-year career. Ross waited too long last year and found the $800 asking price for a West Virginia ticket a little steep, so she stayed home rather than drive or fly with sons Quintan and Byron.

During games, her voice can be heard.

“I’m not quiet at all,” she said. “I’m always yelling even if he can’t hear me. They’re all great games to me, even when he thinks he messed up.”

Those such games have been few and far between as Sweat has developed into one of the premier players in the country.

And to what does momma attribute her baby’s fast rise to the top?

“I told him when you’re hungry, you got to eat,” she said. “You can’t starve. So he got out and ate.”

This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: T'Vondre Sweat, Texas football's momma's boy, is Big 12's menacing defender