Deontae Cooper

Washington RB commit Deontae Cooper has already enrolled at UW, after graduating early from Citrus Hill. He could very well be the gem of this years class. His bio on his scout page says that he owns the California state record for carries in a game when he had 59 carries for 412 yards and four touchdowns against Great Oak in September of 2009. As a junior, Deontae Cooper stood atop the state leaderboard in rushing yards with 2,953 yards and finished second in touchdowns with 47. Ran for 1,212 yards and 18 touchdowns during his 2007 sophomore season, helping lead Perris (Calif.) Citrus Hill to the CIF-SS title.

My thoughts:

Upon looking at the film available on Deontae Cooper, you can see that he has good field awareness. He is patient enough to let plays develop and follows his blockers very well, waiting for either a cutback lane or a gap to explode through. He knows how to make tacklers miss without having to expend a lot of energy and he has a nice burst which gets him into the secondary quickly.

While the transition from high school to college is a very large adjustment, the fact that he has enrolled early will help him tremendously. As you can see in his Go Huskies exclusive, he is pretty slender. Having the opportunity to participate with the strength and conditioning program at UW will help him bulk up over the next nine months. He is listed at 195 lbs, but looks more like 180. I would expect to see him at about 195 by the time the season starts though, which is a good weight for him at this point.

While he is an impact player, unless he can break into the special teams unit as a returner, I would guess that the best course of action for him would be to redshirt his freshman year, seeing as we already have Chris Polk entrenched in the starting role at RB. That being said, Deontae Cooper has a very high upside, and could eventually surpass all of Polk's accomplishments as a RB.

Have a look at the next great UW RB in his highlight video.





Go Huskies exclusive