From overlooked believer to best kept secret: Darius Cooper has the NFL in his sites

BY GAVIN PATRICK

Sports Editor

The NFL is a dream 98% of college football players don’t get to experience. Some are not talented enough; some are overlooked; some don’t even want to make the jump. 

So the 2% that does (1.6% to be exact) has to have something special, right? And a little luck along the way? 

Good thing there’s a case study from Stephenville. His name is Darius Cooper. 

For the last three years, it was almost impossible to watch Tarleton State Texans football without seeing Cooper pop off the screen. He was part of the university's first Division I recruiting class and reached a level of play that Tarleton State had never seen before – or come to expect. 

Cooper leaves Tarleton as its all-time leader in receiving yards with 3,185. In 2024, he led the FCS with 1,450 receiving yards, which was second across all of NCAA Division I, with 14 touchdowns to boot on 76 catches. 

Now, Cooper is training in Midlothian, Texas with a group of athletes and instructors getting in the best shape of his life for Tarleton’s pro day later this month, where NFL teams are sure to take notice.

But like most NFL hopefuls, Cooper’s numbers barely begin to tell the story. 

Cooper grew up in St. Louis, Missouri, where he only received three collegiate offers coming out of Hazelwood West High School. Two were from Division II schools; the other was from one transitioning out of Division II: Tarleton State. 

“I had a really good feeling that [Darius] was a really high-character young man,” Tarleton head coach Todd Whitten said. “He had a wonderful mother who was [there] with him on the trip. He had very good parenting… So, I knew, I just knew he was a real quality person, and that meant a lot.” 

Cooper’s character has always shined, but he wasn’t a star right away. He actually had never played wide receiver before Tarleton State; that’s because he was a quarterback, one that came in with loads of raw athletic ability. 

The plan was for Cooper to spend his first year at quarterback, and if it didn’t work out, he would be moved to another position. Well, it only took Cooper two weeks into his first training camp to come to a conclusion. 

“I kinda got in his ear a little early, off the radar, and said, ‘Hey, you look really good at receiver now, man. Why don’t you come on?’” wide receivers coach and son of Todd Whitten, Tate Whitten, said. “And a couple days after that, that’s when he went up and he said, ‘I think I wanna try receiver.’ So, I cheated just a little bit in that. I got ahead of the game.” 

The “funny” part, as Cooper put it, was that his favorite position had always been wide receiver; his coaches just never saw the fit until that point. Cooper said he’s thankful, though, to have started at quarterback because it gave him a deeper understanding of the game from a bird’s-eye view. 

“You see the whole field as a quarterback,” Cooper said. “So when I moved to receiver… it was kinda easy to gauge and see different coverages and see how people disguise[d] things and see if they [were] in man or zone coverage. It was kind of easy for me to read at receiver ‘cause I was so used to seeing it all at quarterback. … I think it even slowed the game down for me even more.” 

Cooper started making plays in practice from day one as a receiver, turning heads of the coaching staff who thought they’d have to wait much longer to see their investment pay off. 

“He was already doing stuff that you really can’t coach,” Tate Whitten said. “Really instinctual.” 

Cooper’s breakout came in Tarleton’s first game against a Power 5 opponent, the TCU Horned Frogs, in 2022. The newly minted wideout was tasked with facing two future NFL corners, the main of which was Tre'Vius Hodges-Tomlinson, who won the Jim Thorpe Award as the nation’s top defensive back that year. 

In the words of his head coach, Cooper “did a number” on both of them, finishing the game with six catches, 117 yards and a touchdown against the future runner-ups for the national title.  

That day, a legend was born. 

“That was kinda when we and everyone else knew that we had a really good player there,” Todd Whitten said. 

Cooper had rousing success his sophomore year. The TCU game showed he could do it against top competition, and 1,063 yards and nine touchdowns later, other schools came calling. They wanted to pull him out of Stephenville. 

“He would’ve been able to have gone just about anywhere he wanted,” Todd Whitten said. “Probably, the number of offers would have been well into the teens, maybe 20.” 

These weren’t just any schools. Cooper had offers from Power 5 programs, including in the Big 10, that would have given him better exposure against top competition and a better chance to prove himself to NFL scouts. 

Yet – after realizing the family he had at Tarleton, the love and unity they had built with him and lots of prayer – Cooper chose to stay. 

Like many others who had come before, Cooper had fallen in love with the culture. Not many players who come to Tarleton State end up transferring out, and Cooper wasn’t about to break that mold. 

“Coming off that ‘22 season, I wanted to make sure that I was playing,” Cooper said. “I needed to be on the field. That was part of the reason why I stayed because I knew I had a spot, and I knew we [were] growing as a university, so that’s exposure in itself. So, really just knowing that it’s up to God – it don’t matter where you go. If you have talent, the league is going to find you, and that’s kinda what I led on.” 

It doesn’t matter to Cooper if he is a first-round pick or the last pick. He just wants a chance. 

“It just comes down to the kind of person he is,” Todd Whitten said. “He was really loyal to our program. We gave him a chance when nobody else would, and so that meant something to him.” 

It’s so rare for a player to stay at one school for five years in the transfer portal era, but Cooper is a different breed. By the end of it, the once overlooked, dual-threat quarterback who had never played receiver in his life had blossomed into one of the best players in college football. 

And not just that: he got his degree, too. Cooper has had a passion for physical therapy since he left high school, and he earned his degree in kinesiology upon graduation in December; so when he’s not playing football, he can give back to the sport he plays. 

“Definitely [had] to get the degree. [I’m a] student-athlete. School comes first,” Cooper said. “My mom embedded that in me since I was a young boy. School comes before sports, so I definitely had to get the degree first.” 

Cooper was one of the top student-athletes in the country. He maintained close to a 4.0 GPA his entire time at Tarleton and was recognized in January with a spot on the 2024 Academic All-American Team, selected by College Sports Communicators, one of just 53 NCAA Division I players to receive the honor. 

Cooper’s receivers coach, Tate Whitten, called him a “unicorn.” 

“We keep lists of guys who get in trouble and that we’ve gotta maybe have some kind of punishment for, but [Darius] was never on a list,” Todd Whitten said. “His grades were always good. … Darius Coopers don’t come along all that often. He’s as fine a young man as I’ve ever worked with.” 

Todd Whitten shared an instance of Cooper using his platform to help his community after receiving $10,000 from Tarleton’s “Bleed Purple” NIL collective. Cooper wanted to save the money and invest, so Whitten helped set up a meeting for him with a financial advisor. 

“So, you got 10,000 to invest?” the advisor asked Cooper.  

“Nope, I have 8,000,” Cooper responded. 

The advisor laughed and said, “So you’ve already spent 2,000 of it?” 

And Cooper said, “Well, I tied 10 percent to my church (1,000), and I put new tires on my car (the other 1,000).” 

Safe to say, he had things under control. 

“How many 20-year-olds, as soon as they get paid, give 10 percent to their church? Coop does. So, like that financial advisor said, ‘I’ve never heard of that,’” Todd Whitten said, laughing. “But, y’know, that’s Darius Cooper.” 

No one benefited from Cooper’s time at Tarleton more than his quarterback, Victor Gabalis. What made them click on the field, physical attributes aside, was their relationship off it. 

Per Gabalis, Copper is a master at controlling his emotions. “He didn’t say things just to say them,” he said. Cooper made things fun by knowing how to relate with “being goofy” and “having a lot of energy” but also “flipping the switch” when it was time to get serious. 

“He did the same thing with other guys, and it just created bonds,” Gabalis said. “Everybody talks about in the locker room how we miss having DC around.” 

Gabalis described Cooper as a person who others are naturally attracted to. One time, the team was at an event together away from football, and Cooper’s personality was on full display. 

“There was a drumset in the garage, and he had a bunch of people around, and Darius just got on and just started going. And then he just starts singing and made a beat and everybody was getting around, and he just kinda waved,” Gabalis said, laughing the whole way through. 

Cooper’s work-ethic is certainly inspiring. His credibility was apparent. When he spoke up in the locker room, people snapped into focus. And the example he set was second to none, staying before and after practice every day and during the summer catching footballs from the Jugs machine. 

“He was even working an internship (one time), I remember, and so he couldn’t even show up to certain things. But he would always find a way to get his own stuff in,” Gabalis said. 

In terms of the ease he had throwing Cooper the ball, Gabalis described it as an “easy 10.” 

“They were a lot of looks, especially in that last game with South Dakota, [where] there were not looks for me to throw the ball at all, and I just would pull it because we would be on the same page, and he knew where I was gonna place the ball,” Gabalis said. “There was multiple plays in that [South Dakota] game where he and I never had ever talked about certain things, and we would just have a mind-to-mind connection mid-play, just completely off-script.” 

The South Dakota game Gabalis referenced came in the second round of the FCS Playoffs in December. It was perhaps the finest moment of Cooper’s college career – and also his last. 

Facing the FCS’s seventh ranked scoring defense, Cooper exploded for nine catches, 161 yards and three touchdowns in Tarleton’s 31-42 loss. It was a whale of a game that followed his 11-catch, 190-yard, 1-touchdown performance in the first round against Drake University. 

While preparing for those games, Cooper said he gave all his “worries, anxiety and nervousness” to God. Praying is not a special routine for the wide receiver. Marrying the mind to the body is critical for athletes, and Cooper has found his way. 

“By the time that the games were coming, I was so locked in from just, first of all, being ready, being excited to play the game, and then being steadfast in my word and just praying and seeking God,” Cooper said. “I’m definitely grateful for him putting me in that position to be as explosive as possible. And it was quite fun, man. I can’t complain.” 

When the moment got bigger, Cooper played bigger, and those around him couldn’t be more proud. 

“That was definitely special to see, definitely,” Tate Whitten said. “Whenever we needed him, he was there.” 

Now, with the NFL in his sights, Cooper is focused on showcasing parts of his game that he didn’t show in college. The offensive scheme at Tarleton was “fairly simple,” as Cooper put it, and he was only asked to run a few routes. 

Alongside his receivers coach in Midlothian, Cooper has been working hard at running routes he didn’t run at Tarleton, and he’s excited to showcase them at his pro day. 

“If you need me to run a route, I’m gonna run it,” Cooper said. “When it comes to whips, outs, corners, post curls… C routes – anything that you can think of. I feel like I have a lot of confidence in myself and am more than capable of getting that route done.” 

But despite the work-ethic, high character and production at his disposal, Cooper is already being overlooked by NFL evaluators. 

There were 13 FCS players invited to the NFL Scouting Combine in Indianapolis this year. Cooper was not one of them, nor was he invited to any other pre-draft events for top prospects, like the Senior Bowl (an event he was on the watchlist for prior to last season) and the East-West Shrine Bowl. 

To rub it in, a wide receiver from Abilene Christian, Blayne Taylor, was invited to the Shrine Bowl, and Cooper was not. 

But this doesn’t bother Cooper at all. Rather, he chooses to not be bothered by staying steadfast in his faith. 

“I feel like God just kept me away from those things so I can really focus on and lock in training to have a great pro day,” Cooper said. “So, I don’t look into all of the other things, people getting invited; it’s just a distraction in life. If you focus on that, then you[‘re] not focused on what you need to be focused on, which is working hard to get better every day.” 

Cooper’s first goal is to make a 53-man roster on an NFL team – whatever that entails. He won’t start as a number one receiver, but he has experience playing on special teams, which is a role young players often find themselves in as the reason they made the team. 

“What can I do for the team? That’s what I want people to know about me,” Cooper said. “I’m not a selfish receiver or anything like that. I want to do whatever I need to do for us to win, so special teams is big for me. I love being a part of special teams. Whatever you need me at, I’m gonna give my all. … It’s about we, not me.” 

The mottos Cooper lives by has allowed him to put everything in perspective. He knows “football is not going to last forever” and that he has to have “a reason to be there” – besides the fact that he loves the game. 

With Cooper, it all comes back to God. That’s why he will make it apparent to “share the gospel” and “spread love” through his NFL family. 

“Of course, I want to be great in the league when it comes to stats and accolades and everything like that. And that’s going to come,” Cooper said. “My main goal is just being the Godly man that I need to be [who] satisfies God and impacts lives. Whoever I meet, I wanna impact their life in a positive way.” 

One person Cooper has long impacted, and vice visca, is his wife, Kennedy, who he famously proposed to at Pointe Du Hoc before a game in 2023. Kennedy, a registered nurse at Tarleton State’s clinic, has been there for Cooper “since day one.” 

“Even back in JFL when I played little league football, her grandparents literally lived right across the street from where I practiced at,” Cooper said. “It’s just crazy how everything unfolded. Balancing [marriage with football] has just been easy; it’s always been a part of our story. … I’m just blessed to have a woman like her on my side.” 

There are four players from Tarleton State in the modern era that have ever been drafted to the NFL. Today, there is just one active player that bleeds purple and white: E.J. Speed, who went in the fifth round to the Indianapolis Colts in 2019 and is now a starting linebacker. 

Cooper didn’t have the luxury of meeting with teams at the combine, nor will he have all 32 give him a hard look. But those closest to Cooper believe that his physical tools, high character, mental capacity and emotional intelligence give him an “excellent” chance to salvage a pro career and join that 2%. 

“If they don’t draft him, that’s just the dumbest thing,” Gabalis said. “The dude is a freak. You don’t want a freak on your team? I would if I’m a quarterback. As soon as a team drafts him, they’re gonna realize they got a steal.” 

“It wouldn’t surprise me if that dude turned out to be the president of the United States,” Tate Whitten said. “He can do whaever he wants.” 

Either way, the work never ends. No matter Cooper’s place in life, “working, working, working” will always be the main focus. 

“I’m not satisfied till I make it to heaven,” Cooper laughed. “God wakes us up every day to be better. So, that’s the goal: be better.”