Jan. 3, 2014.

The Cotton Bowl win against Oklahoma State was the last time former Missouri receiver Dorial Green-Beckham put on a helmet and competed in an organized football game.

After finishing his sophomore season at Mizzou with 59 catches and 12 touchdowns, Green-Beckham, who already had gotten arrested for possession of marijuana as a freshman, faced two more legal run-ins after his second season. Coach Gary Pinkel decided he couldn’t let Green-Beckham remain on the team.

“Everything got a little crazy after my freshman year at Missouri,” Green-Beckham said in a pre-Combine video that appeared on NFL.com on Tuesday. Thinking about it now, if I could, I would take back all the incidents that I put myself in. Just do the right thing and to be smart about it.

“I learned to put better people around me and to do what’s right, and taking the opportunities I have and just running with them.”

Green-Beckham, listed at 6-foot-6 and 225 pounds in college, is in full-fledged public relations mode ahead of a crucial draft evaluation period. Soon dozens of NFL executives and player personnel people will grill him about his character. About his past and his future. About his decision-making.

The NCAA denied Oklahoma’s appear to waive his mandatory one-year wait period as a non-graduate transfer, and so Green-Beckham also must convince scouts that two years of college football, OTAs and training camp will be enough to prepare him for the NFL.

There’s no questioning the physical talent that once made him the No. 1 recruit in the country.

“He’s one of the best receivers I’ve ever seen,” an AFC college scout who has extensive experience evaluating Green-Beckham said, according to NFL.com. “He’s special. He’s gigantic; he has tremendous body control, balance; he runs like a deer and can leap out of the gym and high-point the ball. He’s special. It’s impressive. If not for all that stuff, he’d be the best receiver to come out since Calvin Johnson.”

Still other scouts said inconsistent hands and route-running make him far from a slam dunk as an NFL wideout.

The NFL.com story painted Mizzou as a bad environment for Green-Beckham, which it portrayed as a vulnerable young man in need of the proper guidance and atmosphere:

“One example of people liking Green-Beckham: Pinkel helped him find his next landing spot, vouching for him with his friend Bob Stoops at the University of Oklahoma. Green-Beckham transferred to Norman, with the Sooners hoping he’d obtain a waiver allowing him to play in 2014. When that effort failed, and the NCAA decided Green-Beckham had to sit a year in accordance to the transfer rules, many worried he’d revert to his old ways.

“By all accounts, that didn’t happen. According to the information gathered by a number of NFL evaluators, Green-Beckham walked the straight and narrow as, in essence, a very well-known practice-squader last fall. He was there for early-morning workouts, quickly established himself as a star on the practice field and planned to stay for the 2015 season. Those plans changed after the firing of co-offensive coordinator Jay Norvell, with whom Green-Beckham had built a strong relationship, but the gifted prospect was able to leave OU under much better circumstances than he did Mizzou.

“‘He’s enabled, spoiled,’ said the NFC personnel executive, who did work on Green-Beckham during the receiver’s time at Mizzou and Oklahoma. ‘Whatever everyone else was doing, he’d do it to be cool, trying to fit in.’

“A second NFC personnel exec added, ‘He’s a good-hearted kid who needed a structured environment. At Mizzou, he was around a bunch of kids that weren’t right for him. … At Oklahoma, he was clean, did everything he was supposed to do. He wasn’t crazy about school, but he was compliant.'”

Though he helped the Tigers to an SEC East title in 2013, Green-Beckham never became the kind of player fans hoped for in Columbia, Mo. But perhaps he’s matured enough to avoid further legal issues and become a professional in the way he handles his business.

Will NFL teams buy into his “reformed” rhetoric?

This week’s NFL Combine will be one of the first indications of which direction he’s going with his post-Mizzou life.