Texas Football: What happened with CB Anthony Cook?

Confusing recent events could wind up hampering the depth in the defensive backfield this offseason for the Texas football program.

In one of the more cryptic social media posts this offseason involving any program in the Big 12, rising junior Texas football defensive back and former four-star cornerback recruit Anthony Cook makes it sound like he’s on his way off the Forty Acres. Texas has a volatile situation in the secondary emerging from recent events this week entering summer workouts.

Cook could now be out of the mix in the Longhorns secondary, and there’s one other defensive back on the team that had a setback this week. Former five-star recruit and rising junior safety/nickelback B.J. Foster just suffered a hand injury that he’ll have to deal with through summer workouts starting this month.

Earlier this week, Cook tweeted out that he essentially would not be returning to the Forty Acres. And he didn’t give a reason why. But he later deleted the original post on his Twitter timeline.

With that, Cook’s Longhorns teammates reacted accordingly. Fellow Texas defensive backs and overall defensive players like Josh Thompson and D’shawn Jamison provided their responses on Twitter later on in the week.

https://twitter.com/d_jamison5/status/1271306927964934144?s=21

Player reactions to this situation with Cook could lead one to believe, along with the fact that he deleted the original tweet, that he might still have a decision up in the air. But this also did seem like a pretty conclusive thing to post out in the public on social media.

If Cook does wind up entering the NCAA Transfer Portal, it would still be a sizable loss for the Longhorns. Earlier in the offseason, Texas did already lose some depth at the cornerback position with rising redshirt senior Donovan Duvernay putting his name in the transfer portal.

At this point, it looks as if head coach Tom Herman and defensive coordinator Chris Ash should count Cook out of the mix in the secondary. That would mean Texas loses a defensive back who has 42 career total tackles, two tackles for loss, one sack, three pass deflections, and one forced fumble.