How a few key decisions turned Brandin Cooks into a choice player
One coach pounded the table. Another almost fell out of his chair. Brandin Cooks’s sterling playmaking skills elicit those types of reactions.
These weren’t acts of frustration from opposing coaches at their wit’s end trying to stop him. These came from Cooks’s advocates. God only knows what’s happened to the furniture belonging to the guys on the other sidelines.
Brian Gray was the offensive coordinator at Lincoln High in Stockton, Calif., when Cooks was a sophomore. Gray wanted the kid — nicknamed “Sonic Boom” by one of his Pop Warner coaches — on his side of the ball, but he was meeting some resistance. Head coach Jim Rubiales was concerned about Cooks’s perceived lack of size and thought he might better suited at cornerback.
“I really had to pound the table to bring Brandin up,’’ Gray said. “He wasn’t the biggest receiver and I think at the time there was some concern, ‘Can he handle it?’ Well, I knew the kid was a competitive giant. And early in that [sophomore] year he ran a post route and he was just faster than everybody on the field. That’s when you knew, ‘Uh-oh, we might have something special on our hands.’’’
It came in a game against rival Tracy High and Gray can still remember the play vividly.
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