Oklahoma Sooners Football: Kerry Cooks accepts position at Texas Tech

With the October firing of Mike Stoops and the recent hiring of Alex Grinch, movement was expected on the defensive side of the coaching staff for the Oklahoma Sooners. The first domino fell when inside linebackers coach Tim Kish announced his retirement, and now defensive backs coach Kerry Cooks is moving on to coach the safeties for the Texas Tech Red Raiders.

Cooks was hired by Bob Stoops prior to the 2015 season and did quite well as a recruiter during his time in Norman. Unfortunately, his players rarely demonstrated improvement — and at times seemed to regress — during his tenure, with the most common complaint being that the DBs (and particularly the cornerbacks) rarely had success making a play on the ball as it approached them. If you listened closely on a fall Saturday, you could likely hear the sound of people yelling “TURN AROUND!” as you sat on your back porch in Oklahoma City.

As inconsistent and unreliable as his units happened to be, this particular development shouldn’t be seen as much of a surprise. I certainly can’t say, however, that I expected him to end up staying in the conference, but we wish him well all the same.

It’ll be interesting to see whether Grinch decides to coach the DBs himself or elects to hire a cornerbacks coach while he focuses on the safeties. Outside of that, there are still a lot of variables as far as the defensive staff is concerned, so expect to see plenty of developments in the coming days and weeks.