MORGANTOWN - There's no way to know for sure if this is true, but consider it good news that West Virginia is giving no clues about what's going on with its left tackle.
It started Tuesday, when the head coach refused to talk about him. Never mind the otherwise encouraging reviews from his first game, when he was supposed to come out and rest regularly but never did until the Mountaineers emptied their bench late.
"I'd prefer not to talk about it," Dana Holgorsen said. "He graded out well. But I'd prefer not to talk about it."
There was a grin on his face and a sparkle in his eye, and after studying his news conference ticks the past four years, we can assume Holgorsen is trying to keep a lid on just how optimistic the Mountaineers are about something they were deeply concerned with not long ago.
Yodny Cajuste is a redshirt freshman, and that serves as a distinction at his position, where experience is something of a prerequisite. It rewards the sort of seasoning that comes from seeing and absorbing every swim and spin move a defender can use, every front and fake a defense can offer. It demands long arms with broad shoulders, a solid core between them and nimble feet beneath them.
How can Cajuste already be there? How hard is this sudden immersion in the spotlight? How is he handling it all?
Well, his age is also a label that makes him off limits to reporters this season. Whatever questions you have will either have to wait until the spring or go through someone else - and someone other than Holgorsen.
Someone like Adam Pankey, who played some right tackle as a redshirt freshman in 2013 and started every game at left tackle a year ago. Pankey is now the left guard, and he partnered with Cajuste for his college debut against Georgia Southern.
"I think he did as well as you can expect for a freshman," Pankey said. "He saw all the blitzes coming and let me know when there was something weird, something fishy off the edge. In that aspect, he really did his job well."
Someone like Skyler Howard, the team's starting quarterback who entrusted his blind side on 25 pass attempts to the newcomer from Miramar, Florida, knowing the first game would offer Cajuste new challenges that could consequently unbuckle Howard's chinstrap.
"He was great," Howard said. "He did a great job for his first career start. I'm starting to feel real comfortable with where he's at."
This is a process and not a finished product. Cajuste committed one of the team's five penalties with a false start in the second quarter of the opener. The other linemen committed none. He isn't on the extra-point team, but he is on the field-goal team, as his coaches try to find ways to preserve him for the season.
As inescapable as he was with both his bullying ways and his fine technique against the Eagles, he'll see better defenses. In fact, he can expect a firmer challenge in Saturday's 3 p.m. home game against Liberty (1-0), the 13th-ranked Football Championship Subdivision program.
The Flames feature 6-foot-2, 250-pound defensive end Chima Uzowihe. The senior is second in school history with 19 ½ sacks and had 2 ½ last week against Delaware State. With 1 ½ more sacks, he'll break the Big South Conference record. With three more sacks, the team captain will break the school record.
But Cajuste is a process himself, far from a finished product. He started playing football in fifth grade and then took six years off before finally agreeing to play with Miramar's team during the spring season of his junior year. He made a deal with his coach: If Cajuste didn't have a scholarship offer at the end of the spring, he'd go back to playing basketball and focusing on his college prospects there.
At the end of the spring, he didn't have one offer. He had more than 10. By the middle of his first and last season of high school football, Cajuste was weeding out schools and actually discarding FCS offers he once considered himself fortunate to hold in his hands. He visited Florida and then WVU, when he received his offer and committed to the Mountaineers just 10 days before signing day in 2014.
The coach who convinced him to try football at Miramar? Damon Cogdell, who was hired by the Mountaineers as their defensive line coach not long before Cajuste agreed to attend school in Morgantown.
Cajuste started out on the defensive line and ended spring football in April as the first-team left tackle. When preseason camp opened in August, the 6-foot-5 Cajuste had gained almost 30 pounds and weighed in at just under 300, much to the delight of offensive line coach Ron Crook.
What followed was a wealth of concern about starting a rookie outside and just as much speculation about moving Pankey back outside to make room for Michigan transfer Kyle Bosch. Though he remains silent, Cajuste has made one clear statement: He doesn't plan on going anywhere.
"He's taken a lot of pride in his development and his ability," Crook said. "He's kind of using that 'He's just a redshirt freshman' thing as a chip on his shoulder. One thing he says a lot to me in our communication is, 'I want to be great. What's my next step? What have I got to do next?' "